Court sides with Google in copyright fight with Oracle
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Technology companies sighed with relief Monday after the Supreme Court sided with Google in a copyright dispute with Oracle. The high court said Google did nothing wrong in copying code to develop the Android operating system now used on most smartphones.
To create Android, which was released in 2007, Google wrote millions of lines of new computer code. It also used about 11,500 lines of code copyrighted as part of Oracle's Java platform. Oracle had sued seeking billions.
But the Supreme Court sided 6-2 with Google, describing the copying as "fair use." The outcome is what most tech companies -- both large and small -- had been rooting for. Both Microsoft and IBM were among the industry heavyweights that had filed briefs backing Google in the case. They and others warned that ruling against the Mountain View, California-based company could have profound consequences, stifling innovation and upending software development.
Oracle had won backing from the movie and recording industries as well as publishers, which favor expansive copyright protections to protect their profits from books, articles, movies, TV shows and music. The Trump administration had also backed Oracle.
In his opinion for the court's majority, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that Google "took only what was needed" and that "Google's copying was transformative," a word the court has used "to describe a copying use that adds something new and important."
Google had said its actions were long-settled, common practice in the industry, a practice that has been good for technical progress. It said there is no copyright protection for the purely functional, noncreative computer code it used, something that couldn't be written another way. But Austin, Texas-based Oracle argued Google "committed an egregious act of plagiarism."
The case has been going on for a decade. Google won the first round when a judge rejected Oracle's copyright claim, but that ruling was overturned on appeal. A jury then sided with Google, but an appeals court again disagreed.
Breyer wrote that in reviewing the lower court's decision, the justices assumed "for argument's sake, that the material was copyrightable."
"But we hold that the copying here at issue nonetheless constituted a fair use. Hence, Google's copying did not violate the copyright law," he wrote.
At one point in the decision, Breyer used a recipe-finding robot as part of an analogy to explain how code works. At another point, he invoked a one-sentence short story to acknowledge that copying a small amount could still be significant. Breyer included both the story, originally in Spanish, and its translation: "When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito that he believed "Oracle's code at issue here is copyrightable, and Google's use of that copyrighted code was anything but fair."
Only eight justices heard the case because it was argued in October, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court.
In a statement, Google's chief legal officer, Kent Walker, called the ruling a "victory for consumers, interoperability, and computer science." "The decision gives legal certainty to the next generation of developers whose new products and services will benefit consumers," Walker wrote.
Oracle's chief legal officer, Dorian Daley, condemned the outcome. "The Google platform just got bigger and market power greater. The barriers to entry higher and the ability to compete lower. They stole Java and spent a decade litigating as only a monopolist can," she wrote in a statement.
Oracle's dogged pursuit of a case had been widely derided by other technology companies as a gross misapplication of copyright law. They argued it threatened to make it more difficult for different computer programs to work together and could stifle innovation among startups that might not be able to pay royalties for a few strands of coding.
The founder of Privacy Lab at Yale Law School, Sean O'Brien, said both amateur and professional software developers will now "sleep a little easier without worrying that innovation and collaboration would be handcuffed by new restrictions."
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a major trade group, was among the technology voices celebrating the Supreme Court's decision. The court decision will also be welcome news to independent software developers, small startups and others who are tinkering with code, said Tiffany Li, a visiting law professor at Boston University.
"This decision probably won't change how startups and software developers operate. It just kind of confirms how they've been operating already," Li said, adding that if Oracle had won that could have harmed a lot of developers because it would have been contrary to how the community currently functions.
The case is Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., 18-956.
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Associated Press writers Michael Liedtke in San Ramon, California; Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, and Frank Bajak in Cleveland contributed to this report.
Case over Trump and Twitter critics dismissed
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a case over former President Donald Trump's efforts to block critics from his personal Twitter account.
The court said there was nothing left to the case after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter and ended his presidential term in January.
Twitter banned Trump two days after the deadly attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6. The company said its decision was "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
The court also formally threw out an appeals court ruling that found Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion arguing that the bigger issue raised by the case, and especially Twitter's decision to boot Trump, is "the dominant digital platforms themselves. As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms."
Thomas agreed with his colleagues about the outcome of the case, but said the situation raises "interesting and important questions."
The case concerned the @realdonaldtrump account with more than 88 million followers and Trump's argument that it is his personal property. The Justice Department argued that blocking people from it was akin to elected officials who refuse to allow their opponents' yard signs on their front lawns.
But the federal appeals court in New York ruled last year that Trump used the account to make daily pronouncements and observations that are overwhelmingly official in nature.
The case had been styled Trump v. Knight First Amendment Institute, the group that originally sued to challenge Trump's decision to block his critics.
But when Trump left office, President Joe Biden replaced Trump in the case's title, though the new president had nothing to do with the lawsuit.
Court nixes Alex Jones' appeal in Newtown shooting case
By Dave Collins
Associated Press
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was fighting a Connecticut court sanction in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of some of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Jones was penalized in 2019 by a trial court judge for an angry outburst on his web show against an attorney for the relatives and for violating numerous orders to turn over documents to the families' lawyers. Judge Barbara Bellis barred Jones from filing a motion to dismiss the case, which remains pending, and said she would order Jones to pay some of the families' legal fees.
Jones argued he should not have been sanctioned for exercising his free speech rights. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Bellis' ruling last year.
The families and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, which left 20 first-graders and six educators dead, are suing Jones and his show over claims that the massacre was a hoax. The families said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones' followers because of the hoax conspiracy.
Jones, whose show is based in Austin, Texas, has since said he believes the shooting occurred.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Jones' request to hear his appeal without comment.
Jones' attorney, Norman Pattis, called the court's decision "a disappointment."
"Judge Bellis, and the Connecticut Supreme Court, asserted frightening and standardless power over the extrajudicial statements of litigants," Pattis said in an email to The Associated Press. "Mr. Jones never threatened anyone; had he done so, he would have been charged with a crime. We are inching our way case-by-case toward a toothless, politically correct, First Amendment."
Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said Jones deserved to be sanctioned for his threatening comments on his show.
"The families are eager to resume their case and to hold Mr. Jones and his financial network accountable for their actions," Koskoff said in a statement.
"From the beginning, our goal has been to prevent future victims of mass shootings from being preyed on by opportunists."
The sanction came after Jones, on Infowars in 2019, accused an attorney for the families, Christopher Mattei, of planting child pornography that was found in email metadata files that Jones turned over to the Sandy Hook families' lawyers. Pattis has said the pornography was in emails sent to Jones that were never opened.
"You're trying to set me up with child porn," Jones said on the show. "One million dollars, you little gang members. One million dollars to put your head on a pike."
Jones showed a photo of Mattei, a former federal prosecutor, and said, "I'm done. Total war. You want it? You got it."
Jones added, "One million dollars when they are convicted. The bounty is out, (expletive). ... They're going to get your (expletive), you little dirt bag.
One million, (expletive). It's out on your (expletive)."
The Connecticut Supreme Court said the sanctions against Jones did not run afoul of the First Amendment because they were imposed due to speech that was an "imminent and likely threat to the administration of justice." Chief Justice Richard Robinson wrote, "language evoking threats of physical harm is not tolerable."
The families are suing Jones, Infowars and others for defamation and infliction of emotional distress. They are seeking damages that have yet to be determined.
"Certain individuals have persistently perpetuated a monstrous, unspeakable lie: that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, and that the families who lost loved ones that day are actors who faked their relatives' deaths," the lawsuit says.
The suit called Jones "the most prolific among these fabricators," despite him not believing the shooting was a hoax, and alleged Jones has made tens of millions of dollar a year employing false narratives.
Jones' previous lawyer had argued that comments on his show about the shooting being a hoax were protected by free speech rights, and Jones allowed others to state their opinions that the massacre was fake because his is a "proponent of free and open debate."
Sandy Hook families also sued Jones and others for defamation in other states related to the hoax conspiracy.
In one of the lawsuits, a Texas judge in 2019 ordered Jones to pay $100,000 in legal fees and refused to dismiss the suit. And a jury in Wisconsin awarded $450,000 to one of the parents in his lawsuit against conspiracy theorist writers, not including Jones, who claimed the massacre never happened.
