SAN FRANCISCO, Ca, U.S.A. - Google has won a six-year court case brought by software firm Oracle, which claimed Google had infringed its copyright by using 11,500 lines of Java code in its Android operating system. 
The jury ruled that Google’s use of 37 Java APIs (application programming interfaces) was fair use. The news will be welcomed by developers, who typically rely on free access to APIs to develop third-party services.
“I salute you for your extreme hard work in this case,” US district judge William Alsup told the jury, who had deliberated for three days at San Francisco federal court. 
“I know there will be appeals and the like.”
Oracle had contested that Google’s use of its proprietary Java code exceeded fair use, and was seeking damages of up to $9bn.
Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system, with 1.4 billion monthly active users worldwide and a market share of more than 80%.
Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system, with 1.4 billion monthly active users worldwide and a market share of more than 80%.
Those users downloaded 65bn apps in 2015 alone.
More importantly, the “fair use” decision in this case sets a strong precedent in an industry where programs and apps are often as much constructed from various building blocks of code that already exist as they are
from whole cloth.
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