Fair use or “first excuse”? Oracle v. Google goes to the jury
The Oracle-Google copyright showdown is now in the hands of a San Francisco jury, following heated closing arguments given today to a packed courtroom. It’s the culmination of the most high-profile attack on Google’s Android mobile operating system, which Oracle lawyers say illegally ripped off Java.
In closing today, Oracle lawyer Michael Jacobs said that Google knowingly structured its Android APIs in the same way that Java APIs were structured, even though it knew that move was legally dicey; Google’s lawyer, meanwhile, emphasized Android’s originality and the fact that Sun Microsystems, which invented Java, had only good things to say about Android, even encouraging Google.
In addition to arguing that it didn’t infringe Sun’s copyrights at all, Google argued any use it did make should be considered “fair use.” Jacobs ridiculed the fair use argument, saying it was merely Google’s “first excuse.”
