Off We Go: Oracle Officially Appeals Google's Fair Use Win

from the off-to-the-races dept

Wed, Oct 26th 2016 4:08pm — Mike Masnick

It was only a matter of time until this happened, but Oracle has officially appealed its fair use Java API loss to the Federal Circuit (CAFC). As you recall, after a years-long process, including the (correct) ruling that APIs are not covered by copyright being ridiculously overturned by CAFC, a new trial found that even if APIs are copyright-eligible, Google's use was covered by fair use. Oracle then tried multiple times to get Judge William Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, but failed. In fact, on Oracle's second attempt to get Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, citing "game changing" evidence that Google failed to hand over important information on discovery, it actually turned out that Oracle's lawyers had simply failed to read what Google had, in fact, handed over.

And now the case will finally move up a level, as it was always going to do. There should be lots of fireworks here. CAFC is notoriously bad on a variety of issues, but it would take a pretty impressive level of confusion here to mess this up. Going against a jury's findings on fair use is a big ask, and Oracle is likely to try some silly games whining about jury instructions and such. Hopefully CAFC doesn't fall for it. If it does, hopefully, it doesn't muck stuff up as badly as it did with its first ruling in this case, that simply got confused over the nature of what an API actually is.

e159d3de ee97 4d07 92df db808e4a43c5 (PDF)e159d3de ee97 4d07 92df db808e4a43c5 (Text)

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: android, api, cafc, copyright, fair use, java
Companies: google, oracle

14 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Norahc (profile), 26 Oct 2016 @ 4:18pm

Fair use
If Oracle has such a hard time understanding fair use, then maybe their customers should introduce them to the concept of no use and stop using Java completely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 1:06pm
  
  Re: Fair use
  Few companies use actual Java these days. There are many, many alternatives that are A: better, B: free, C: Not Oracle.
  
  Their famous attacks on customers for arbitrary license fees that total in the millions are well known, adding Java only incites Oracle to attack more often.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Eldakka (profile), 27 Oct 2016 @ 6:41pm
    
    Re: Re: Fair use
    There are buttloads of companies and organizations (e.g. governments) that still use java and have no plans to replace it.
    
    And as to your points:
    
    A) possibly, depending on task. it depends on what you are doing as to whether there are better alternatives.
    
    B) Java is free. When was the last time you paid:
    
    to write code in Java;
    
    for a JVM (binaries to run your Java code in) implementation?
    
    Sure, you CAN pay for those, if you want, but usually you are paying for support or a developer tools (IDE, e.g. J Builder) or management framework (Application Server, e.g. Weblogic, WAS, etc).
    
    C) There are non-oracle implementations of Java.
    
    Don't get me wrong, I do dislike, despise even, Oracle the Company - I think them buying Sun was one of the worst events for the IT industry in the last decade.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Mike (profile), 28 Oct 2016 @ 6:49am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Fair use
      My particular hatred for them comes from what they did to MySQL. From my perspective, they purchased MySQL just to shut down it's development and protect OracleDB's market share.
      
      I'm a web developer - a huge number of (I might even go so far as to say most) database driven websites use MySQL. The complete lack of features for it compared to other free databases (PostgreSQL, MariaDB, etc) is shameful, and makes my job a lot harder than it needs to be.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2016 @ 6:43pm

It's disgusting that a company would potentially destroy an entire industry (including their own) all for sake of some money.

I guess that's how you tell when a company has reached irrelevancy. When it's decided on the motto "If I can't have it, then no-one can."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Zem, 26 Oct 2016 @ 8:07pm

Headline correction needed
The page headline should read.

Oracle to retire JAVA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 3:08am
  
  Re: Headline correction needed
  About time too. One COBOL was enough, now we have COBOL2 (C++), COBOL3 (JAVA), COBOL4 (C#), and so forth. We need to bring back the good ole days of FORTH.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 11:57am
    
    Re: Re: Headline correction needed
    You first.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 6:51pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Headline correction needed
      I am. (Tone of delight).
      
      Various project work based on FORTH principles. Once ready then released. Yippy.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 12:18pm
    
    Re: Re: Headline correction needed
    Come on now, Cobol is a language written for use by non programmers, but which is only ever used by programmers, and only under duress at that. C on the other hand is a language written by programmers for programmers, and is the language of choice for implementing other languages.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 7:08pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Headline correction needed
      Cobol in a prior organisation was used to write various communications facilities by some serious programmers. I found it better than C++, JAVA and C#. It may have been verbose in many ways, but it was still usable in a clear way, particularly for support and maintenance after it was written. I do know of one programmer who would never program in it again no matter what payment was offered.
      
      C is a badly designed high level assembler. Inconsistent in the various implementations, very easy to foul up and excellent at making buggy programs.
      
      But, I wasn't describing C as a COBOL, but those COBOL like languages (that are worse) that are in use today - C++, JAVA, C#, etc.
      
      The only reason I am using it for implementing a language at this point in time is that it is used for the rest of the project. The hoops I will have to jump through to allow for multiple O/S's and hardware bases will make using C a real pain in the posterior.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Oct 2016 @ 3:56am

Not content with destroying Sun...
...Oracle now seeks to destroy the entire Java ecosystem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Crazy Canuck, 27 Oct 2016 @ 9:05am

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try, try, try, try again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- nasch (profile), 28 Oct 2016 @ 1:42pm
  
  Re:
  I thought you were going to say if at first you don't succeed, try catch finally.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]