A US court has revived a multi-billion dollar copyright case brought by Oracle against Alphabet’s Google. The US Court of Appeals said Google’s use of Oracle’s Java development platform to create the Android operating system was not protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law, reversing a 2016 jury verdict.
The court sent the case back to a US judge in San Francisco for a trial to determine how much compensation Google must pay. Oracle had previously sought $9 billion (A$11 billion) in damages.
The closely watched case, which dates to 2010, involves how much copyright protection should extend to the Java programming language, which Google used to design the Android operating system that runs many of the world’s smartphones.
