Google won a jury verdict that kills Oracle Corp.’s claim to a $9 billion slice of the search giant’s Android phone business (Oracle America Inc. v. Google Inc.Jury Verdict).
Oracle contended that Google needed a license to use its Java programming language to develop Android, the operating system in 80 percent of the world’s mobile devices. Jurors in San Francisco federal court on May 26 rejected that argument and concluded Google made fair use of the code under copyright law.
A decision against Google had the potential to give significantly more weight to software copyrights, and to spur ...