SAN FRANCISCO (Web Desk) – Google has won a six-year court case after a jury ruled that the company did not unfairly use parts of 37 Java APIs (application programming interfaces), saving the tech giant several billion dollars in damages sought by business software firm Oracle.
Oracle had claimed that Google had infringed its copyright by using 11,500 lines of Java code in its Android operating system.
The retrial stemmed from a 2012 case in which Google also prevailed, and has been closely watched by the tech industry because of its implications for software innovation and copyright law.
Google said in a statement that the verdict “represents 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 innovative consumer products.”
Oracle, which obtained Java when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, had been seeking some $9 billion in damages.
After Google prevailed in the first trial, Oracle appealed, and an appellate panel ruled in 2014 that the lower court had erred, sending the case between the two Silicon Valley titans back for a new trial.
Oracle said on Thursday that its battle was not over.
“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.
