US Supreme Court Denies Google’s Petition for Certiorari in API Copyright Dispute

The US Supreme Court has denied Google’s petition for a writ of certiorari for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC) controversial decision in Oracle v Google (reported here). The CAFC had reversed a decision by the US District Court for the Northern District of California concerning the copyrightability of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In the opinion of the CAFC, the declaring code and the structure, sequence and organization of Oracle’s API packages are entitled to copyright protection.

APIs have been described as “specifications that allow programs to communicate with each other”, and the CAFC recognized that the common use of pre-written APIs “allows programmers to build certain functions into their programs, rather than writ[ing] their own code to perform those functions from scratch.” Many stakeholders in the software industry are concerned that the CAFC’s recognition of the subsistence of copyright in such programs will stifle innovation and negatively affect interoperability between different platforms.

The Supreme Court’s denial to grant certiorari means that the CAFC’s decision will stand. However, this dispute is far from over, as the CAFC remanded Google’s fair use defence to the District Court for further proceedings consistent with the decision on copyrightability. The ruling by the CAFC notes that the issue of interoperability should be considered in a fair use analysis. Many of the concerns about the effects of this decision may be alleviated if the District Court accepts Google’s fair use defence on remand.