Google wins crucial API ruling, Oracle's case decimated

Federal Judge William Alsup, who recently finished presiding over the six-week Oracle v. Google trial, ruled that the structure of the Java APIs that Oracle was trying to assert can't be copyrighted at all. It's only the code itself—not the "how-to" instructions represented by APIs—that can be the subject of a copyright claim, ruled Judge Alsup. "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," wrote the judge. The ruling is the cornerstone of what now looks like a complete win for Google in its legal struggle with Oracle, which began more than two years ago. The order follows an inconclusive copyright trial and a patent trial that Oracle also lost.