"The copyright case of the decade".
In a major far-reaching digital intellectual property law landmark case
the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS"),
as reported by Adam Liptak in the New York Times
at Supreme Court Backs Google in Copyright Fight With Oracle,
decided in a 6-2 holding
in an opinion written by Justice Breyer
that Google's use of Java declaring API code in Android software
was "fair use" under the prevailing copyright laws,
although the question of whether such software code was at all copyrightable,
was left unanswered, as an issue whose resolution was not required to decide the case. See Google v. Oracle America, (Google LLC, Petitioner v. Oracle America, Inc., No. 18-956, Apr 05, 2021, Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Breyer, J., delivered the opinion
of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch,
and Kavanaugh, JJ., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which Alito, J., joined. Barrett, J., took no part in
the consideration or decision of the case.
We posted at length about this eminently significant case previously at LawPundit, for which see:
- Android and the Oracle Java API Copyright Scam Against Google, LawPundit, May 25, 2016
- Jury Finds in Favor of Google Against Oracle in Android v. Java Fair Use Copyright Case, LawPundit, May 28, 2016
- Google LLC vs. Oracle America Inc. : Android Java Software Interface Copyrights Fair Use Juries : U.S. Supreme Court Oral Argument October 7, LawPundit, October 6, 2020
- Post-Oral-Argument : U.S. Supreme Court October 7 Google v. Oracle America, No. 18-956 : Android Java Software Interface Copyrights Fair Use Juries, LawPundit, October 8, 2020
We are thus happy to report that the Supreme Court's holding in this case keeps intact our spotless record of predicting correctly the Supreme Court reversal of appealed cases that we have regarded to be wrongly decided in the lower instance by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
We were also happy to see via the court records of the proceeding that Kannon K. Shanmugam in the Washington D.C. office of the international New York City headquartered law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP -- our former law firm -- represented the petitioner Google before the Supremes.
Well done lads and ladies !
