The U.S. Supreme Court issued a new argument calendar Friday, setting March 24 as the day for justices to hear oral arguments in the decade-long lawsuit by Oracle against Google over Google’s use of Oracle’s Java code to create Google’s Android operating system.
In the court’s argument sessions, which typically last an hour, justices can ask questions directly of lawyers representing parties in the case.
Oracle in 2010 sued Google over Google’s use of Java code. Redwood City software titan Oracle has claimed up to $9 billion in damages.
In 2012, a federal district court judge ruled that the type of code at issue — application programming interfaces, which underlie complex software systems — was not subject to copyright, but the ruling was reversed on appeal. However, the appeal court left it open for Google to seek a ruling that it had the right to the code under copyright law’s “fair use” provision.
Mountain View tech giant Google asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the appeal court’s reversal, but it declined. After the case returned to district court, a jury in 2016 unanimously found Google had the right to the code through fair use. Oracle appealed, and in March 2018 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit again reversed the lower court’s decision.
In November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which under the court’s rules is called “Google v Oracle.” In addition to determining whether Google has a right to the code under fair use, the court is expected to answer the question of whether application programming interfaces can be copyrighted.
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