Let Oracle own APIs, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

The right of companies to use key elements of computer code, known as application programming interfaces (APIs), was cast deeper into doubt after the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court not to hear a controversial case that pits Google and a long list of supporters against Oracle. The news came after the Supreme Court asked the Obama Administration in January to weigh in on a lower court ruling in 2014 that favored Oracle, and shocked many in the tech industry. The issue before the court is when, if at all, APIs can be protected by copyright. The outcome has serious repercussions not just for Google, but the entire software industry, since APIs act as a sort of lingua franca that allow different computer programs to deliver instructions to each other.

In the case of Oracle and Google, the dispute turns on the search giant’s use of certain Java APIs for its Android software. Java is a programming language that was developed by Oracle’s predecessor, Sun Microsystems, and is widely used by software developers. Google, backed by tech trade groups and law professors, does not dispute that computer code can be copyrighted. The parties argue instead that Google only used a small portion of Oracle’s Java Standard Library, and did so only in order to use common signposts or headers, rather than reinventing the instructions from scratch. The argument, in effect, is that developers should be able to use these small chunks of code, which serve as industry standards, free of copyright restrictions. US District Judge William Alsup, a respected Silicon Valley judge, initially sided with Google in 2012 after teaching himself Java for the trial. He found that the APIs were functional, and fell on the wrong side of copyright law’s “idea/expression dichotomy” and merger doctrine -- these are rules that prevents copyright law from becoming too broad, and covering everyday things like menus and simple instructions.