Law and Innovation

Fresh and interesting article posted on FOSS Patents about the Oracle v. Google Android-Java copyright case. The suspense was all killing us but yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States finally denied the petition for a writ of certiorari. Happy reading! "The copyrightability of code relating to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) may elicit more heat than light from a small but vocal group of people. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, has not concluded that there is anything quite so special about the subject that Google's petition for writ of certiorari (request for Supreme Court review) in Oracle's Android-Java copyright case should be granted. At its Thursday conference, the court denied the petition, as just reported by Reuters court reporter Dan Levine on Twitter . And as he accurately noted , this is a "huge victory" for Oracle. The order list is now available online. On page 11 you can find this entry: 14-410 GOOG...

Recently, the Supreme Court of the United Sates, the highest federal court in the United States, has sought help from the Solicitor General concerning whether it should hear a Android-Java copyright case between Oracle America and Google.  The U.S. Supreme Court has so far not confirmed whether it will hear the case.  Instead, "[t]he Solicitor General is invited to file a brief in this case expressing the views of the United States". As explained on the Department of Justice's site , this person (Donald Verrilli) "determines the cases in which Supreme Court review will be sought by the government and the positions the government will take before the Court. The Office's staff attorneys, Deputy Solicitors General and Assistants to the Solicitor General, participate in preparing the petitions, briefs, and other papers filed by the government in the Supreme Court. The Solicitor General conducts the oral arguments before the Supreme Court". As a reminder...