↓ Skip to main content

“Google’s limited copying of the API is a transformative use.”

Supreme Court of the United Statessupremecourt.gov ↗

Oracle bought Sun and spent a decade trying to turn 11,500 lines of declaring code into a toll booth. The Court ruled 6-2 that the copying was fair use. It dodged the bigger question of whether APIs can be copyrighted at all. Every developer who ever reimplemented an interface can exhale, but only until the next lawsuit asks that question again.