Legacy Thread

[basserdan]

Is Google's Supreme Court doomsday approaching?

By Haley Kennington
September 17, 2020

(please note: The underlined words are 'clickable' links when accessed via the link at the bottom of this page)
In a matter of weeks, Google v. Oracle — the "copyright case of the century" — will take a crucial step toward resolution.

This decade-long dispute will determine whether Google's unauthorized replication of more than 11,000 lines of Oracle's Java was illegal.

When Apple's iPhone hit stores in 2007, Google needed to develop a similar concept to remain competitive. Java, Google thought, would serve as the basis for its own operating system. But rather than license the software outright, the company instead chose to steal the code and ask for forgiveness later.

As demonstrated through the ongoing court case, Google discussed licensing Java in 2005 in emails to Sun Microsystems but then walked away from the negotiations. Google's leadership allegedly wrote, "If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language, or 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way." This appears to be indubitable proof that Google was aware that the code was copyrightable.

This shouldn't come as a surprise. A top lawyer for Google once admitted that "Google's leadership doesn't care terribly much about precedent or law." The company seems to think that its high-priced lawyers and endless monetary resources can always rewrite the rules of the road to meet the company's financial interests.

Google's strategy of ostensibly stealing intellectual property appears to rely on the plaintiff's inability to withstand the years of costly litigation and legal delay tactics that it brings against its challengers. This practice has been coined in the I.P. space as "efficient infringement." Similar claims have been made over the years from companies such as the speaker company Sonos, the lyric website Genius, and the review site Yelp!, all of which allege that Google has stolen their content, software, or other technologies.

Unfortunately for Google, efficient infringement in the Google v. Oracle case was a nonstarter. Oracle is a much bigger plaintiff challenger than the other companies it has faced in years past, and it had no problem holding firm over the last ten years of Google's legal delay tactics. Now, after a decade, the case finds itself in the high court's hands.

Previously, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stated that Google's decision to move the code directly to another platform without any alterations wasn't "fair use" since it wasn't transformative and was used just for one company's financial gain.? When reviewing the facts and matters of law in this case, it becomes abundantly clear that it made the right call.

In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court should confirm the U.S. Court of Federal Claims' findings. It should not try to "correct" the software industry for Google, one of the most predatory companies in modern times. Deep down, even Google itself likely knows that the coding it lifted is copyrightable. The company has endless cash and appears to want to use it to carve out I.P. loopholes for itself. That should not be tolerated — not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/is_googles_supreme_court_doomsday_approaching.html