By JESSICA GRESKO
WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court justices discussed restaurant menus, computer keyboards, songs and even the periodic table Wednesday in trying to resolve a copyright dispute between tech giants Google and Oracle.
The justices were hearing arguments Wednesday in a dispute that is worth billions and important to the future of software. It wasn’t clear how the justices would rule, but some of the justices seemed at least concerned about what a ruling for Oracle could mean.
The case before the justices has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. Google says that to create Android, which was released in 2007, it wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.
Google has defended its actions, saying what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. But Oracle says Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism” and sued, seeking more than $8 billion.
But Roberts also had strong words for Google’s lawyer. “Cracking the safe may be the only way to get the money that you want, but that doesn’t mean you can do it,” Roberts said, suggesting Google could have licensed what it wanted to use.
To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. But it also used 11,330 lines of code and an organization that’s part of Oracle’s Java platform.
Google says what it did is long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. And it says there is no copyright protection for the purely functional, noncreative computer code it used, something that couldn’t be written another way. But Oracle says Google “committed an egregious act of plagiarism” and sued.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was one of several justices who worried about the consequences of ruling for Oracle. She noted that what Google took was “less than 1% of the Java code” and asked why the justices should “upend” the current understanding of what is able to be copyrighted.
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