U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear Intellectual Property dispute between Oracle And Google impacting smartphones

On November 15, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a copyright battle between Oracle and Google over smartphone software.  The justices granted certiorari nearly a decade after Oracle first sued Google for using copyrighted pieces of Java software when it built its Android smartphone platform.

In its lawsuit against Google, Oracle claimed that Google incorporated into its Android smartphone blocks of prewritten computer code that Oracle developed to assist programmers.  Google countered that the code it used was not copyrightable, but the Federal Circuit, in 2014, disagreed and ruled in Oracle’s favor.  In a subsequent jury trial, the jury found that Google’s use of the code was permissible under the copyright law’s fair use doctrine.  However, the Federal Circuit overturned that verdict in 2018.  In January, Google asked the Supreme Court to take the case in order to review both Federal Circuit rulings. 

When the Supreme Court issues its ruling, which is expected in mid-2020, it will be its first precedential decision addressing software copyrights.  As such, it has the potential to be a landmark decision because it implicates several copyright issues including fair use and appellate deference in copyright cases.  Briefing will take place in the coming months, followed by oral arguments in early-2020.  

The lawsuit has attracted significant attention from the technology industry.  The case is Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., case number 18-956, in the Supreme Court of the United States.