Official: Jury rules in favor of Google in the Oracle vs Google trial
After three days of deliberation, a jury in the Northern District of California (San Francisco) has come out and ruled in favor of Google in the Oracle vs Google trial. The trial, which kicked off earlier this month, brought into question whether or not programming language APIs are free to use for software developers.
Google called upon several high-profile witnesses like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to testify on their behalf. Schmidt claims that Google used Java code to innovate — not to simply copy code. This meant that Android didn’t need to license Java code, so any copying of Java APIs fell under fair use, something the jury agreed with.
Of course, the battle is just beginning and the results are sure to be appealed. Although the trail never reached the damages phase, initial Oracle reports put the dollar amount of damages somewhere around $9 billion.