Clash Of The Technology Titans: Google V Oracle

• Published date: 24 May 2021
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Copyright
• Law Firm: SKRINE
• Author: Gooi Yang Shuh

Gooi Yang Shuh summarises the recent US Supreme Court decision in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. and considers its relevance to Malaysian copyright laws

In what is widely regarded as one of the most significant decisions on copyright in software, the US Supreme Court recently announced its verdict in the case of Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. This is the culmination of a long-running dispute between technology giants Google and Oracle, which has been watched closely by many in the tech industry due to the central question which the Supreme Court was tasked to answer: whether or not blocks of codes known as "application programming interfaces" (APIs, for short) are copyrightable, and, if so, the extent to which they can be copied.

DECIPHERING CODES

To appreciate just why this decision is so significant, we have to firstly understand what APIs are and how they are used.

APIs are lines of code in software programmes that allow multiple software applications to interact and communicate with one another without restriction. In today's software-driven economy, APIs have become key building blocks to building larger systems. They allow programmers to call upon pre-written computing tasks for use in their own programmes, ensure interoperability between different apps and make it easier to develop complex and integrated platforms.

APIs can be broken down into two categories: "declaring code" and "implementing code". Implementing codes essentially tell the computer how to execute a particular task whereas declaring codes call upon the pre-written implementing code to execute that specific task. To illustrate this, Justice Stephen Breyer (who wrote the majority opinion of the Supreme Court) used the analogy of the QWETY keyboard: 'the declaring code's shortcut function is similar to ... the QWERTY keyboard on a typewriter that calls up a certain letter when you press a particular key'.

Thus, the declaring code is the portion of the API which allows easy access to the API's task library of pre-written codes to select a particular task for implementing complex computing functions using simple commands. Without such access, programmers would have to write their own code from scratch each time to perform the same function.

LET THEM FIGHT

Returning to the case at hand, Oracle America, Inc. owns the copyright in Java SE, a computing platform that utilises the popular Java computer programming language. Due to a common set of Java APIs, when programmers write software using Java language and the Java SE libraries, the programmer needs to...