UPDATED 02:53 EDT / AUGUST 14 2015

NEWS

Oracle slams Google, says its “destroyed” market for Java

Oracle Corp. has hit out at Google and claimed that its Android operating system is “destroying” the market for its Java software, and potentially losing it millions in lost revenues from mobile devices.

The claims come as part of an amendment to Oracle’s long running lawsuit against Google, in which it claims the search giant’s Android software infringes upon the copyrights of its Java platform. According to Oracle, the lawsuit needs to be amended to take into consideration Android’s rapid evolution since the case was launched in 2010. Since that time, Google has rolled out Android Auto, Android Wear, Android TV, Google Play and various other platforms that “make Android a truly ubiquitous platform”, Oracle said.

Google reportedly hasn’t objected to Oracle’s amendment request, Computerworld reported.

Going back to Oracle’s original complaint, the company claimed Android violated its copyrighted Java source code. Android now dominates the mobile market with a more than 80 percent market share, Oracle said. It added that because the new Android versions aren’t compatible with Java, Google has “irreversibly destroyed Java’s fundamental value proposition as a potential mobile device operating system.”

Oracle also said Google has rolled out six new updates to Android since it initiated its case, all of which build on source code taken from it.

“As with previous versions of Android, these six Android releases copy thousands of lines of source code from the Java platform,” Oracle’s supplemental complaint stated.

Oracle further noted how Google’s annual revenue had doubled from $29 billion to $66 billion between 2010 and 2014, with a big chunk of these new profits coming via advertising on Android.

“The Android platform plays a key role in generating Google’s mobile advertising revenue,” Oracle said.

Oracle is demanding unspecified monetary damages and a court order blocking Google “from continued acts of infringement of the Java platform copyrights.”

The case has so far determined that Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are copyrightable, but is likely to drag on for some time yet.

Back in 2012, a federal judge in San Francisco sided with Google, ruling that API code could not be copyrighted. U.S. District Judge William Alsup stated that while Google could have reorganized “the various methods under different groupings among the various classes and packages,” the reality is that APIs are “a utilitarian and functional set of symbols, each to carry out a pre-assigned function… Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability.”

Alsup’s decision was later reversed by a federal appeals court, which said the “declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection.” However, the appeals court ordered litigation before Judge Alsup to determine if API code fell under “fair use” rights, which would mean it didn’t owe Oracle any compensation.

Alsup once again agreed with Google, saying it was “fair use”, but once again, Oracle had his decision overturned, this time by the Ninth Circuit court, in May 2014. Google immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which also rejected the case.

Photo Credit: Oracle_Photos_Screenshots via Compfight cc

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