(www.cnbc.com)
The dispute concerns about 11,500 lines of code that Google used to build its popular Android mobile operating system, which were replicated from the Java application programming interface developed by Sun Microsystems.
At the end of an hour and a half of arguments, Justice Stephen Breyer, who at one point read aloud some code, seemed to be the only sure vote. The liberal justice appeared to lean toward Google.
Several of the other justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, suggested they were sympathetic to Oracle’s copyright claims.
Still, they appeared reluctant to rule in Oracle’s favor because of arguments made by leading computer scientists and Microsoft, in friend-of-the-court briefs, that doing so could upend the industry.
Several of the court’s conservatives, including Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito, noted that Google’s allies had warned that the “sky will fall” if Oracle won.
The dueling conceptions of the code at issue fueled much of the legal dispute. At stake is not just the $9 billion that Oracle has said that it is owed but also the the law of copyright in the internet era, and which types of code will be subject to protection.
The Oracle/Google case that will decide the future of software development has been going on for the last decade has been heard in front of SCOTUS. Here's the report and its a mixed bag…
Justices wary of upending tech industry in Google v. Oracle Supreme Court fight