Google fights off Oracle’s $9B claim

Google Inc. won a jury verdict that kills Oracle Corp.’ s claim to a US$9 billion slice of the search giant’s Android phone business.

Oracle contended that Google needed a licence to use its Java programming language to develop Android, the operating system in 80 per cent of the world’s mobile devices. Jurors in San Francisco federal court on Thursday rejected that argument and concluded Google made fair use of the code under copyright law.

A decision against Google had the potential to give significantly more weight to software copyrights, and to spur litigation to protect those added rights. Oracle — which started the trial at an advantage with the judge explaining that it had already been established that Google had infringed Oracle’s copyrights — will probably appeal, though legal experts said overturning a jury verdict will be difficult.

Google relied on witnesses including former chief executive Eric Schmidt, who is now chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc., to convince jurors that it used Java to innovate, rather than merely copy code. Before joining Google, Schmidt worked at Sun Microsystems developing and marketing Java. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and Schmidt was involved in Google’s failed licensing negotiations that spurred the copyright-infringement lawsuit filed that year by the database maker.

Schmidt told jurors that, based on his “many years of experience” with Java, he believed Google was permitted to use the APIs — the short- cuts that allow developers to write programs to work across software platforms — without a negotiated licence, as long as the company relied on its own code. Sun promoted them as “free and open,” and not sold or licensed separately from Java, he said.

Central to Oracle’s bid for what would have been one of the largest jury verdicts in U.S. history was its claim that Google has reaped US$21 billion in profit from more than three billion activations of Android. Oracle sought damages of US$8.8 billion, plus US$475 million in what it claims was lost licensing revenue.

Oracle general counsel Dorian Daley said the company plans to appeal the verdict.

“We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market,” Daley said in a statement. “Oracle brought this lawsuit to put a stop to Google’s illegal behaviour. We believe there are numerous grounds for appeal.”

Google relied on a “freemarket” argument, said Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who has followed the case closely since it was filed in 2010.

Google claimed it was within its rights to use the organization and labelling of the Java code to develop Android because programmers were already familiar with them, Ochoa said. Google’s message was that “Oracle shouldn’t ‘own’ programmers simply because they had taken the time to learn Java,” Ochoa said.

Ochoa was one of 41 academics who agreed with Google that the code at issue didn’t merit copyright protection and urged the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The high court last year declined to take it.

“Today’s verdict that Android makes fair use of Java APIs represents a win for the Android ecosystem, for the Java programming community and for software developers who rely on open and free programming languages to build innovative consumer products,” Google said in an emailed statement.