US Supreme Court sides with Google in major copyright dispute with Oracle

Google had appealed a 2018 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington reviving the suit.

The US Supreme Court handed Alphabet’s Google a major victory on Monday, ruling that its use of Oracle Corp’s software code to build the Android operating system that runs most of the world’s smartphones did not violate federal copyright law.

In a 6-2 decision, the justices overturned a lower court's ruling that found Google's inclusion of Oracle's software code in Android did not constitute a fair use under U.S. copyright law.

Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, said that allowing Oracle to enforce a copyright on its code would harm the public by making it a "lock limiting the future creativity