■ The Supreme Court sided with Google in a copyright dispute with Oracle. 4A
WASHINGTON — Technology companies sighed with relief Monday after the Supreme Court sided with Google in a copyright dispute with Oracle.
The high court said Google did nothing wrong in copying code to develop the Android operating system now used on most smartphones.
To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. It also used about 11,500 lines of code copyrighted as part of Oracle’s Java platform. Oracle had sued seeking billions.
But the Supreme Court sided 6-2 with Google, describing the copying as “fair use.” The outcome is what most tech companies — both large and small — had been rooting for.
In his opinion for the court’s majority, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that Google “took only what was needed” and that “Google’s copying was transformative,” a word the court has used “to describe a copying use that adds something new and important.”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito that he believed “Oracle’s code at issue here is copyrightable, and Google’s use of that copyrighted code was anything but fair.”
Only eight justices heard the case because it was argued in October, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court.
In other cases:
■ The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to block critics from his personal Twitter account. The court said there was nothing left to the case after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter and ended his presidential term in January. The court also formally threw out an appeals court ruling that found Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint.
■ The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Infowars host Alex Jones, who was fighting a Connecticut court sanction in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of some of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.