Posted on 10/14/2020 5:27:27 AM PDT by gattaca
While a decision in Google v. Oracle isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant indicates Google broke the law to get ahead. Michael J. PappasBy Michael J. Pappas OCTOBER 14, 2020 The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Google v. Oracle on Oct. 7. The case involves several legal issues, all of which boil down to one principal question: Did Google cheat and steal its way to the top? While a decision on the case isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant points to the answer being a clear and resounding yes.
What Did Google Do? At the start of the decade, Google was at risk of losing its tech dominance. Its search and advertising monopoly relied heavily on personal computers, which quickly started losing steam with the rise of the mobile phone marketplace. That posed a problem for Google, which didn’t even have a mobile operating system of its own.
Google didn’t want to cede more control of the marketplace to the likes of Apple and Microsoft. To get ahead, it knew it needed to move — and fast. Rather than create entirely on its own all the parts of the mobile operating system that has now come to be known as Android, Google elected to use more than 11,000 lines of coding from Oracle’s Java to make it run.
Internal emails from Android head Andy Rubin show that he advised the company to negotiate for a license. The company appeared to agree initially, as it asked for and received terms and pricing from Sun Microsystems, the owner of Java at the time. That’s when the plot twist began.
Ostensibly not liking Sun’s terms, Google co-founder Larry Page 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.” The company ultimately chose option two, setting the stage for a heated 10-year-legal battle that finally made its way to the Supreme Court this week.
Court Dismantled Google’s Dovish Anti-IP Arguments Google acknowledged that it copied 11,000 lines of code from Java, but it argued the code can’t be copyrightable because there aren’t enough ways for a company to make what Java did. On Wednesday, however, Justice Neil Gorsuch dismantled that claim by pointing out the obvious: How, then, did Microsoft and Apple, which didn’t use Java to make their operating systems, manage without it?
“Others have managed to innovate their way around it,” Gorsuch said. They have “been able to come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying.”
Gorsuch’s point is certainly a valid one; however, his colleagues made clear that even if Microsoft and Apple weren’t able to manage without Java, Google’s legal argument is still weak.
Chief Justice John Roberts articulated the analogy of breaking into someone’s safe because the combination’s gatekeeper refused to provide it. “Cracking the safe may be the only way to get the money that you want, but that doesn’t mean that you can do it,” he said. “If it’s the only way, the way for you to get it is to get a license.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh appeared to agree, stating, “You’re not allowed to copy a song … just because it’s the only way to express that song.”
The justices are, of course, correct. Exclusive rights and allowing innovators to benefit from their creations is what U.S. copyright law is all about. Those who argue otherwise might as well condemn the whole concept of intellectual property altogether. Who better to corroborate the justice’s claims than two of the leading copyright voices in the United States?
In critiquing Google’s legal case, Orrin Hatch and Bob Goodlatte — the respective former chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees — said Congress extended copyright protection to all parts of a computer program’s expression. Goodlatte pointed out that the Copyright Act’s report “even explicitly singles out computer programs as a new form of expression that was ‘considered copyrightable from the outset without the need of new legislation.’”
This duo would know. These two former members spearheaded the first review and update of the Copyright Act since the 1970s for the new digital age, but Google seems to think it knows better. Thankfully, the justices didn’t seem to buy what Google was selling. They did their homework — or they just have common sense.
Google’s Claims Could Threaten the Entire U.S. Economy Without question, ruling in favor of Google would set a terrible precedent that wouldn’t bode well for the federal and state government officials working diligently to crack down on the tech giant’s abuse. During oral arguments, however, Justice Samuel Alito raised the possibility that it could do more than that.
“I’m concerned,” he said to a Google lawyer, “that, under your argument, all computer code is at risk of losing protection.”
Judging by the wide variety of legal briefs that companies, trade groups, and legal scholars have filed against Google, Alito has cause for concern. Significant portions of the U.S. economy appear worried about what a dovish ruling in Google v. Oracle could mean for them.
Thankfully, however, by the looks of the justices’ skepticism on Wednesday morning, we will likely never have to find out, and the future of the nation’s copyright laws will remain safe and sound.
It is reported that Ellison personally owns 36% of the company stock.
Not sure how many friends of Ellison are major stock holders.
I’d say it is very doubtful an unfriendly takeover would be successful.
Maybe. Of late, it seems you can be found guilty of breaking fairly major laws and then being fined a $1 for it, or being outright released.
Now, if the SCOTUS finds against Google, and Google has to pay eight or nine figures, then I’ll be impressed.
Google is going to pay in the billions if not the tens of billions.
Glad to see it happen.
Thanks for posting.
What did RBG say from her deathbed about THIS?
Rutabaga’s Ideas Matter don’t ya know?
NO!
Back in the late 90’s I worked with a guy who was a dead ringer for Bill Gates and got highly paid to make spoof appearances as him. He was even on the cover of “WIRED” magazine spoofing a hip Bill Gates.
He got a gig for Sun Microsystems to appear at their annual stock holders meetings. The gig was to walk out on the stage as BG and claim that Microsoft had just purchased their company. Obviously this was a hostile crowd so it didn’t go over well, until they finally let the joke out of the bag.
Ok, honest question here. If that code was fair game to begin with why was google ever in talks to license it? If they started out planning to pay for it and then changed their minds they are going to have a hard time arguing they never needed to pay to begin with.
It needs to. I despise google. (spelled in lower case letters on purpose)
I just did a search on him. 4 wives, divorced each wife
What about Twitter?
I get the desire to paint Google as bad guys, but they are not in this particular case.
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I GET that what I’m about to say is counter intuitive on it’s face. That said, I despise those leftist/marxist/socialists hate America bastards that run Google so much I STILL hope they get their ass handed to them. Indeed, I’m reminded of the Pennzoil/Texaco case.
Eight-thousand lines of code were lifted from JAVA to build the Android Phone operating system. Google claimed it was too hard to write working code for a smartphone, neglecting to consider Apple, Microsoft, and foreign competitors have done so. Blatant theft! USSC should have passed on this Google appeal, allowed the Oracle win of 2018 to stand.
Oracle is owed a license fee, damages, interest, court costs, and so forth from their win on appeal in 2018.
Sometimes the Court takes a case not because a majority want to reverse the lower court but because it feels the issue is important enough it needs Supreme Court treatment.
Twitter too....but they’re not as powerful as Alphabet or Facebook by a long shot. Parler is growing rapidly. There’s no way somebody could just start another Alphabet or Facebook and compete with those two.
Amazon and Apple need to be taken down as well - especially Amazon.
I would imagine the penalty would be all the gross amount of money google made x 3
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