Google has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on contentious litigation against Oracle arguing that the high court must act to protect innovation in high tech.
Google’s request seeks to overturn an appeals court ruling that found Oracle could copyright APIs of its Java programming language, which Google used to design its Android smartphone operating system.
Oracle sued Google in 2010, claiming that Google had improperly incorporated parts of Java into Android. Oracle wants $1 billion on its copyright claims. Oracle claimed Google’s Android trampled on its rights to the structure of 37 Java APIs. A San Francisco federal judge had decided that Oracle could not claim copyright protection on parts of Java, but earlier this year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington disagreed.
In its filing this week, Google said the company would never been able to innovate had the Federal Circuit’s reasoning been in place when the company was formed.
“Early computer companies could have blocked vast amounts of technological development by claiming 95-year copyright monopolies over the basic building blocks of computer design and programming,” Google wrote.
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