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Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#31

Post by rayiner »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20
rayiner wrote: post #12

These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential…

Would that be like Oracle arguing jury nullification? It seems that the case law on nullification is that the jury's verdict is the definition unless vacated by procedural error. Thoughts?

It's the opposite, in that instead of the jury overruling the judge on law (normally the province of the judge), the judge overrules the jury on the ultimate factual question of liability (normally the province of the jury). The required showing is accordingly exacting (though hardly impossible to meet in practice): no rational jury could have reached the same conclusion.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#32

Post by mythz »

Whew, Oracle's lawyers and blind greed doesn't get to destroy interoperability for the entire Tech Industry.

But the fact that Oracle could get this close and spin deceit to a non-technical Jury to decide whether using API declarations from an OSS code-base would in some universe entitle them to a $9B payday, is frightening.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#33

Post by shmerl »

Congratulations! It's a pity that previous decision declared APIs copyrightable. This never should have happened. But at least fair use worked out.

I wonder though how universal that ruling would be. Is any reimplementation of APIs going to be fair use, and if not, what are the criteria?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#34

Post by throwawaykeno »

koolba wrote: post #25
dctoedt wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/505

> Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] I think that'd be good for the ecosystem as it'd send a message that there will be consequence for pursuing frivolous lawsuits.

I don't think it's fair to call this law suit frivolous.

From a developer perspective, the ideal and just end result has always seemed rather obvious. However, the multi-year history of this case demonstrates the correct legal answer not so obvious, at least from a legal perspective.

For example, settling the issue on fair use was definitely not how most people thought/hoped this would shake out way back in the beginning of the law suit(s).

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#35

Post by toufka »

phasmantistes wrote: post #3

I'd also just like to give huge props to Sarah Jeong for keeping up such a high-quality live stream of tweets over the course of the entire trial. That's reporting done right.

Yep Sarah Jeong @sarahjeong, and Parker Higgins @xor (of EFF) both did great jobs in communicating about the trial. They both provided an account along with some context.

Sarah's reporting: https://storify.com/sarahjeong

Parker's story: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/stakes-are-high-oracle...

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#36

Post by untog »

nabaraz wrote: post #15

My favourite part of the trial was when the judge told Oracle that a high schooler could write rangeCheck[1]. [1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/1612228/judge...

My favourite part:

Movement to a few minutes of terse explanations, including what the acronym GNU stands for: GNU is Not Unix.

“The G part stands for GNU?” Alsup asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” said Schwartz on the stand.

“That doesn’t make any sense,”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerd...

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#37

Post by pfg »

pavpanchekha wrote: post #23

This is possibly my best-case scenario. APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court), and this seems reasonable, since some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits. But implementing them is fair use, preserving the utility of APIs for compatibility. Great news!

> APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court)

My understanding is that they refused to hear the case at the time. Is that, legally speaking, the same thing as agreeing with the circuit court, or could they have just refused to hear the case for some other reason (e.g. because they wanted to see the ruling on fair use first)?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#39

Post by BinaryIdiot »

pavpanchekha wrote: post #23

This is possibly my best-case scenario. APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court), and this seems reasonable, since some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits. But implementing them is fair use, preserving the utility of APIs for compatibility. Great news!

> APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court)

That decision was not made by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has not heard this case...yet.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#40

Post by yuhong »

theptip wrote: post #27
rayiner wrote: post #12

These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential…

Agreed, it sounds like by the letter of the law Google's use was not "fair use", if you grant the assumption that APIs are copyrightable in the first place. What recourse does Oracle have now? Didn't the Supreme Court decline to take this issue up last time round? Does that mean this case is closed?

I wonder what would happen if they try the Supreme Court now.
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