Tyler Ochoa was quoted by Marketwatch about the latest battle between Oracle Corp. and Google over “fair use” of software code. The complex case was originally filed by Oracle in 2010, months after the company bought Sun Microsystems Inc., seeking billions of dollars in revenue from Android mobile phones. Among the assets Oracle bought was Sun’s Java programming language, which was originally developed by Sun as free, open-source software.
“Software programmers have been assuming for decades that this sort of thing was free to reuse,” said Tyler Ochoa, a professor and copyright expert at Santa Clara University’s School of Law. “In that sense, the Supreme Court preserves the status quo. It would have been much more disruptive to the software industry if they had ruled in Oracle’s favor.”
