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| xda-developers.com |
Since the dawn of technology companies have always been known for suing each other. Most of the time it's something petty like the scrolling motion of a device. And sometimes rulings like Net Neutrality affect a lot of people because of the outcome that it could lead to; luckily for us we were saved from what could have been a disaster to the internet. But now we have bigger fish to fry. The battle between Oracle and Google is not a small court case, it is heading to the supreme court and the decision they make could affect mobile innovation.
Background
On August of 2010, Oracle, who recently bought Sun Microsystems, filed a court dispute relating to copyright claims on Google's operating system Android. They claimed that Android infringed on things like several test files, the structure, sequence and organization of the Java Application Programming Interface (API), and the API documentation. Google took the stand that because APIs are open to the public they fall into Fair Use. |
| staticworld.net |
On May 31st, 2012 the court published it's ruling. It ruled that "So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical." But Oracle wasn't having any of that they applied to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and the hearing was on December 4,2013.
The judgement was released on May 9,2014; and the appeals court ruled against the district court's decision saying "structure, sequence and organization" of an API was copyrightable. But Google was not having that because they started a petition to get the case picked up by the Supreme Court. And now the Supreme Court are looking over it and their decision may make or break mobile innovation.
Explain Like I'm Five
I am going to explain this topic as elementary as i can. Imagine that Oracle baked the world's first cake. And in their cake they added only ingredients from their store with the following steps:
- Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt
- combine the butter
- add eggs
- add more flour and milk
- etc
And the cake came out great, but now everybody else wants to make a cake. So Google takes the steps and adds only ingredients from their store and the cake came out great. But Oracle gets mad and says that Google stole their idea and their teacher says that because Google used the steps needed to make a cake (Not the stuff that makes Oracle's cake) they get in trouble. Even though those are the ONLY STEPS IN THE ENTIRE WORLD TO MAKE A CAKE, Google still got in trouble. I don't think that's right.
My Thoughts
Hopefully my Preschool explanation helped you picture it better, but either way this could ruin apps. Because if Oracle is giving the power to copyright Java that would mean that all APIs, which are giving out to the public so that we could help innovate the product, would belong to the company. Or if a company like Twitter wanted to they could make you pay them to make your App able to access Twitter. What i don't get is if Oracle didn't want Google to use their API, WHY WAS IT GIVEN OUT TO THE PUBLIC IN THE FIRST PLACE? This is exactly like net neutrality because if you give companies the power to restrict peoples use to openly public APIs, This would hinder innovation.
If Oracle was to win this case that one developer with the app idea of a lifetime will not be able to make that app because they couldn't afford to pay for the Twitter's API, Facebook's API, and Oracle's API. And then the only way to remove that ruling after it was giving would be by constitutional amendment and do you know how hard that is?
#OraclevsGoogle
Source: https://www.eff.org
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