Oracle won a big legal victory over Google on Friday, when a federal appeals overturned a ruling in their epic battle over the Java programming language. Larry Ellison and company are calling it a win for the entire software industry, but others see it differently. They believe it could harm the industry in enormous ways. Some even think it could come back to bite Oracle.
The dispute comes down to arcane code used in Google’s Android operating system, and if the courts ultimately find in favor of Oracle, the decision could reverberate across the tech industry. The situation is complicated, but it can be summed up pretty simply. Oracle owns Java. Google cloned Java in building Android. Oracle sued. And now the courts are trying to decide when it’s OK to clone someone else’s software.
Oracle owns Java. Google cloned Java in building Android. Oracle sued. And now the courts are trying to decide when it’s OK to clone someone else’s software.
If you asked a software developer about this, he will probably tell you the cloning is fine as long as you don’t just cut and paste the source code. But in suing Google, Oracle argues differently. They claim copyright not just over the source code itself, but over the standard names and structures used to organize Java. In other words, Oracle says it owns the designs of Java’s application programming interfaces, or APIs.
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