Supreme Court Denies Google Appeal on Oracle Suit

By Brent Kendall 

WASHINGTON--The Supreme Court on Monday denied a Google Inc. appeal that sought to stop a billion-dollar Oracle Corp. lawsuit by seeking limits on software copyright protections.

The high court's move is the latest development in a case dating back to 2010, when Oracle alleged Google's Android smartphone operating system infringed its copyrights on its Java platform.

The justices, without comment, declined to disturb a May 2014 appeals court ruling in Oracle's favor that reinvigorated the company's case against Google. The appeals court, overruling a trial judge, said 37 packages of prewritten Java programs, known as application programming interfaces, were entitled to copyright protection.

Oracle has sought more than $1 billion in damages. A jury originally held that Google infringed the Oracle copyrights, but it deadlocked on Google's defense that its copying amounted to fair use. That issue will have to be retried in a lower court.

Google had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case and limit how software makers could use copyright law to assert exclusive rights over computer programs. It argued Oracle shouldn't be able to claim copyrights on basic software commands.

Oracle said its computer code was original and creative, and argued that Google's position would undermine important legal protections for software. It said Google should have paid for a license or written all of its own code separately.

The tech industry has followed the case closely. The Supreme Court, too, showed some initial interest, asking the Obama administration for its views on whether the court should intervene.

U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli responded with a brief that urged the court to sidestep the case, particularly because the fair-use issue hadn't been resolved in the lower court. Mr. Verrilli also said one of Google's key arguments against copyrights on the Java packages was without merit.

Write to Brent Kendall at [e-mail]

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