"In what observers have hailed as the “copyright case of the century,” an eight-member Supreme Court heard arguments on October 7, 2020, in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc., a long-running intellectualproperty dispute between the two tech giants. Along with the billions of dollars at stake between the parties, the Court’s decision in Google v. Oracle could have far-reaching implications for software companies, the broader technology industry, and other copyright-intensive industries. Reflecting these stakes, the Supreme Court received over 70 amicus briefs from industry, advocacy groups, academics, and other stakeholders, ranging from computer scientists and small software startup firms to IBM, Microsoft, and the Motion Picture Association. This Sidebar reviews the legal doctrines at issue in Google, the facts of the dispute, the parties’ arguments, and the potential implications of the Court’s decision for Congress.
Software Copyright Basics
Copyright law grants certain exclusive legal rights to authors of original creative works, such as books,
music, fine art, and architecture. At least since 1980, U.S. copyright law has protected computer programs
as a type of literary work. Applying legal principles originally crafted for books to computer code has not
always been a straightforward task, in part because computer programs are more functional than other
copyrightable subject matter. Courts have long wrestled with the appropriate scope of copyright
protection in computer code. When the Supreme Court last tried to weigh in on software copyright in the
1990s, it divided 4-4 and therefore issued no precedential decision. Given that the Court heard arguments
in Google with eight Justices presiding, there is at least a possibility of a 4-4 split in this case as well,
although the probability of such an outcome remains unclear..
Google v. Oracle
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