Oracle and Google have had a historic, years-long court battle that seemingly ended largely in Google’s favor, but Oracle has recently filed an appeal to bring the fight back to the courtroom. They have already tried to appeal the decision once, but this time, Oracle claims that the reason they’re asking for the case to be reopened is that they have some evidence that they didn’t get to present in the last few court battles, which they feel will be sufficient to put the matter in their favor. The appeal argues that Android has made its way into markets that Java used to occupy outside of the smartphone space, and that Google’s official implementation of Android apps on Chrome OS constitutes competition in the PC space, the lack of which was part of why Android was determined to not have substantially harmed Java’s market in the last case.
The same cast of characters that made the last trial what it was will be present for this one, should the appeal go through, including Annette Hurst, the Oracle lawyer who grilled Andy Rubin and publicly revealed trade secrets concerning Android revenue, which ended with a court order for Oracle to pay the cost of Google having the records sealed, though the figures had already made their way online by that time. Oracle is asserting that Google did copy far more of Java than was necessary, and directly harmed Java’s potential in the market by doing so. As such, they are seeking no less than a complete overturn of the previous verdict, which would mean that Google would be at risk of having to pay out around $9 billion again.
While the previous trial did find that Google’s use of Java constituted Fair Use under applicable licenses, Oracle is confident that the evidence that they did not get to present before, which they did not disclose in their appeal filing, will give the court a new outlook on the case. They are also confident that Google has blown past any notion of fair use with Java by expanding Android into other markets outside of the smartphone and tablet space, especially in personal computers, though it could be argued that a full implementation of Android is not present in Chromebooks, which would compromise the crux of this new case. Oracle is still awaiting a response on the appeal, which was filed on Friday, February 10.