Judge agrees with Oracle, Google’s use of Java was not fair use

Oracle has won an appeal, which means that Google may still have to pay for the use of Java in Android. Oracle previously said it was entitled to $8.8 billion in damages.

The US Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of Oracle, Bloomberg reports. According to the judge, Google has gone too far with the use of Java in Android to consider it fair use. In the long-running lawsuit, Google has managed to get away with that argument so far, but Oracle filed an appeal early last year. The case between Oracle and Google has been going on since 2010.

The judge has now ruled in favor of Oracle, but the case is again being referred to a federal court in California to determine the amount Oracle is entitled to. In 2016, Oracle claimed in a copyright lawsuit that Google had made $22 billion in profit with Android. The desired compensation of 8.8 billion dollars was based on that amount.

Oracle is suing Google for damages because certain Android APIs are based on Java. Google says in its defense that only a small part of the software has been used in a fair use context and that the company therefore owes nothing to Oracle. The developer of Java states that the software is freely available for use in apps, but that it is not so if it is used in a competing platform or if it is embedded in an electronic device.

The Court of Appeal stated that Google’s use of Java in Android cannot be considered non-commercial, despite Android being free. According to the court, Google has received 42 billion dollars in revenue from advertisements via Android. Furthermore, the court says there is “nothing fair about literally taking a copyrighted work and using it for the same purpose as the original in a competing platform.”