About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 1 (May 10, 2021)

handle is hein.crs/govedga0001 and id is 1 raw text is: S Congressional ______ Research Service Google v. Oracle: Supreme Court Rules for Google in Landmark Software Copyright Case May 10, 2021 On April 5, 2021, the Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., the culmination of a decade-long software copyright dispute between the two tech giants. Resolving what observers have hailed as the copyright case of the century, the Court held in Google's favor, finding that Google's copying of the declaring code of the Java SE application programming interface (API) was a fair use and thus did not infringe Oracle's copyright in Java. As a formal matter, the Court's holding was relatively narrow, concluding that Google's copying of certain code from the Java API-what the Court characterized as reimplementation of a user interface-was a fair use under the case-by-case balancing of the statutory fair use factors. As a practical matter, however, the Court's decision is likely to have major significance for the software industry, and may also potentially affect fair use for other copyrightable subject matter-such as art, music, and television. This Sidebar reviews the basics of copyright in software; the dispute in Google v. Oracle; the Court's decision; and potential effects for computer technology and other copyright-intensive industries. It then briefly highlights some considerations for Congress. Software Copyright Basics Copyright law grants certain exclusive legal rights to authors of original creative works, such as books, music, visual art, and architecture. Since 1980, the Copyright Act has explicitly protected computer programs as a type of literary work. Applying legal principles originally crafted for books to computer code has not always been a straightforward task, in part because computer programs are more functional than most other copyrightable subject matter. Courts have thus long wrestled with the appropriate scope of copyright protection in computer code. When the Supreme Court last heard a case involving software copyright in the 1990s, it divided 4-4 and therefore issued no precedential decision. Three key copyright doctrines affect the scope of copyright protection for computer code. The first is the idea/expression dichotomy, codified in Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act, which states that copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery. This doctrine derives from the Supreme Court's 1880 decision in Baker v. Selden, which held that the copyright in a book describing a system of accounting extended only to the Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10597 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most