Tech Sector Supports Google in Oracle Appeal of Fair Use Verdict
Tech sector stakeholders supported Google in amicus briefs submitted or set to be submitted later in Oracle’s appeal to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals of the Oracle v. Google. Oracle is appealing a San Francisco federal jury’s 2016 verdict that Google’s fair use defense for coding and names in Oracle's Java application programming interface (API) technology in its Android mobile operating system qualifies as a transformative fair use (see 1605260067). MPAA and RIAA in February backed Oracle (see 1702220031).
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The pro-Google briefs complemented aspects of Google’s brief, in which the company said the San Francisco jury “was entitled to conclude that, by building on what had come before, and creating an open source platform on which others could build further, Google engaged in the type of use that the fair use doctrine protects.” The San Francisco court, under District Judge William Alsup, “did not abuse its discretion in limiting the fair-use retrial to the subject matter of the first trial -- the Android operating system in smartphones and tablets,” Google said (in Pacer). Alsup’s court wasn't required to examine “other Android products or different devices” and didn’t “clearly err in finding that Google had committed no discovery misconduct.” Oracle contended Alsup “repeatedly undermined” the company’s case, causing the jury to find in Google’s favor (see 1702130043).
Oracle is ignoring 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ precedent that permits “copying of expression for the purpose of developing interoperable products with similar functionality to the plaintiffs’ products,” the Computer & Communications Industry Association said: That circuit “sought to alleviate the harm to consumers resulting from being ‘locked-in’ to a particular computing environment.” The Federal Circuit should note the 9th Circuit finding that the question of whether “the defendant acted in good faith” should factor into a fair use ruling in Oracle, CCIA said. Copyright should likewise “not prevent the portability of programming skills to different environments,” said the group, with members including Google.
The 9th Circuit now says “the possibility of attaining a particular end through multiple different methods does not render the uncopyrightable a proper subject of copyright,” which makes it imperative the Federal Circuit now decide the Java APIs “are uncopyrightable,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge said: Applying the 9th Circuit precedent “avoids a split” with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and “fends off” possible “appellate forum shopping.” The Federal Circuit should affirm the San Francisco jury’s fair use verdict, since current interpretation of the doctrine says functional elements of a computer program are entitled to a “lower degree of protection” than more traditional works, the groups said.
The Supreme Court should “recognize here that allowing copyright owners to monopolize software programming interfaces poses” a risk of lock-in and has “important implications for fair use," the American Antitrust Institute said. If the court evaluated fair use “at Oracle’s preferred level of abstraction, it would mean that software interfaces that become industry standards because of their functional value, not their expressive content, could never be subject to fair use,” AAI said. “Innovation in software would necessarily suffer.”
Mozilla and another tech sector trio -- Microsoft, HP and Red Hat -- were also set to have submitted amicus briefs later Tuesday in support of Google. Lawyers didn’t comment on contents of the drafts.