Oracle takes Google to the Next Level

Oracle has been fighting a long drawn out 10 year fight against Google over its use of Java in Android. Oracle’s accusation is that Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism” by building support for Java into Android without officially licensing the language.

The two points in question are, can you copyright the building blocks of a coding language like Java? If you can, then is utilizing that code for interoperability purposes fair use? Oracle’s answer is “no” on both points. Oracle makes the argument that “Java was a complex and creative creation, Google copied it after failing to develop its own app ecosystem, and the resulting Android operating system undercut Java in a way that hurt its value”.

Many big tech companies are standing with Google, warning that a win for Oracle would make it hard to build interoperable software. Oracle on the other hand, has argued that this point is irrelevant because while Google made it easy for Java developers to build Android apps, Java and Android apps aren’t totally compatible. So “for all Google’s extolling the virtues of interoperability, it bears emphasis: Google admitted that it purposely made Android incompatible with Java.”

Oracle and Google will appear before the supreme court on March 24th.

By Platform De.Central