On Thursday, a US jury handed Google a major victory in a long-running copyright battle with Oracle Corp. The battle was over Android software being used to run most of the worlds smart phones. Google had claimed that its use of Oracle’s Java development platform to create Android was protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law. The jury collectively upheld claims of Google and brought the trial to a close. Earlier Oracle had claimed $9 billion which is roughly INR 60,350 crores in damages from Google. The jury’s decision prevented Oracle from the amount claimed in the damage.
However, Oracle said they saw many grounds to appeal and would do so. In a statement Oracle General Counsel Dorian Daley said we strongly believe that Google developed Android by illegally copying core Java technology to rush into the mobile device market. A trial in 2012 had ended with the jury not giving decision in any ones favour. Fearing that an Oracle victory could spur more software copyright lawsuit the trial was closely watched by software developers.
Google had full faith that their witness Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt would be able to convince jurors that Google had used Java to create its own innovative product and not stolen another company’s intellectual property, as claimed by Oracle. Earlier in a retrial at US District Court in San Francisco, Oracle had said that Google’s Android operating system had violated its copyright on parts of Java. Alphabet’s Google unit had said that it should be able to use Java without paying a fee under fair use. Following the verdict little change could be seen in the shares of Oracle and Alphabet in after-hours trade.