Google scores victory over Oracle in US Supreme Court

Google on Monday won a major victory in a long-running copyright battle with Oracle. The US Supreme Court handed Google the win by saying that its use of Oracle's software code to build the Andriod operating system didn't violate federal copyright law.

The judges overturned a lower court's ruling that said Google's use of the software code was not fair under US law.

Oracle and Google, two California-based technology giants with combined annual revenues of more than $175 billion, have been feuding since Oracle sued for copyright infringement in 2010 in San Francisco federal court.

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Google had appealed a 2018 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington reviving the suit.

The ruling spares Google of a potentially massive damages verdict. Oracle had been seeking more than $8 billion, but renewed estimates went as high as $20 billion to $30 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

Oracle's lawsuit accused Google of plagiarizing its Java software by copying 11,330 lines of computer code as well as the way it is organized, to create Android and reap billions of dollars in revenue. Android, for which developers have created millions of applications, now powers more than 70% of the world's mobile devices.

Google said it did not copy a computer program but rather used elements of Java's software code needed to operate a computer program or platform. Federal copyright law does not protect mere "methods of operation."

The companies also disputed whether Google made fair use of Oracle's software code, making it permissible under the copyright law.

(With Reuters inputs)