Off We Go: Oracle Officially Appeals Google's Fair Use Win

It was only a matter of time until this happened, but Oracle has officially appealed its fair use Java API loss to the Federal Circuit (CAFC). As you recall, after a years-long process, including the (correct) ruling that APIs are not covered by copyright being ridiculously overturned by CAFC, a new trial found that even if APIs are copyright-eligible, Google's use was covered by fair use. Oracle then tried multiple times to get Judge William Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, but failed. In fact, on Oracle's second attempt to get Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, citing "game changing" evidence that Google failed to hand over important information on discovery, it actually turned out that Oracle's lawyers had simply failed to read what Google had, in fact, handed over. And now the case will finally move up a level, as it was always going to do. There should be lots of fireworks here. CAFC is notoriously bad on a variety of issues, but it would take a pretty impressive level of confusion here to mess this up. Going against a jury's findings on fair use is a big ask, and Oracle is likely to try some silly games whining about jury instructions and such. Hopefully CAFC doesn't fall for it. If it does, hopefully, it doesn't muck stuff up as badly as it did with its first ruling in this case, that simply got confused over the nature of what an API actually is. Permalink | Comments | Email This Story