Google vs Oracle Lawsuit Update News: Google beats Oracle in the $9billion lawsuit
Time's over for Oracle in the lawsuit now that the former has triumphed. A US jury handed Google a major victory on Thursday in what looked like a 'never-ending' copyright battle with Oracle Corp over Android software used to run most of the world's smartphones.
The jury unanimously upheld claims by Google that its use of Oracle's Java development platform to create Android was protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law, bringing trial to a close without Oracle winning any of the $9 billion USD in damages it requested.Oracle said it saw many grounds to appeal and would do so. "We strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market," Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley said in a statement.
Alphabet Inc's Google in a statement called the verdict "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 their innovative consumer products."The trial was closely watched by software developers, who feared an Oracle victory could spur more software copyright lawsuits.Google relied on high-profile witnesses like Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt to convince jurors it used Java to create its own innovative product, rather than steal someone else's intellectual property that Oracle claimed.In the retrial at US District Court in San Francisco, Oracle said Google's Android operating system violated its copyright on parts of Java. Alphabet's Google unit said it should be able to use Java without paying a fee under fair use.
A trial in 2012 ended in a deadlocked jury.Shares of Oracle and Alphabet were little-changed in after-hours of trade following the verdict.After the first trial, US District Judge William Alsup ruled that the elements of Java at issue were not eligible for copyright protection at all. A federal appeals court disagreed in 2014, ruling that computer language that connects programs known as application programming interfaces, or APIs to be copyrighted.
