On 5/7/2012 2:24 PM, Brian Conrad wrote:
The news reports have been mentioning that the verdict does not
address the issue of "fair use" that Google raised.
Groklaw has this to say [1]:
[ Recap of the day: Google won everything but the one issue that the
judge has to answer anyway, the API SSO issue. Oracle prevailed only on
9 lines of code that Google admitted prior to trial to have included by
mistake and then removed from current Android. Oracle's own expert, the
judge pointed out in court, valued those 9 lines of code at zero. So
that means, if we are looking at damages, that so far Oracle has won
nothing. There is no liability. You can't have infringement without
considering fair use, Google asserts, and there will be briefing on
that. Somebody has to decide that. Don't let anyone fool you. Today was
a major victory for Google. That's why after the jury left, our reporter
says that Google's table was laughing, and Oracle's mighty glum.]
And, "The jurors couldn't get unanimous on the fair use issue. That's
the one they skipped."
So the one issue that the judge was going to rule on later anyway --
whether the API can be considered copyrightable at all -- is the key to
whether Google is liable. "Whether the APIs infringe" is pretty obvious
if they're copyrightable, and in answering that question the jury was
told to assume they WERE copyrightable. If the jury had considered it
fair use, then the judge wouldn't have been forced to rule on whether it
was copyrightable, but since the jury couldn't decide, it will hinge on
the judge's conclusion.
Tim
[1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120507122749740
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