U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup's 41-page determined that the Java APIs (application programming interfaces) in the case were functional and utilitarian components of Java, and therefore not protected. Oracle's lawsuit claimed that Google's Android software infringed patents and copyrights for Java that Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems in early 2010.
Alsup was careful to say that this ruling wasn't meant to apply to all Java APIs, just the ones in the case, but his decision nonetheless was applauded by some observers, who felt that if he ruled in Oracle's favor, it would set a bad precedent and inhibit new innovations in programming.
Now Oracle will have some time to regroup and mull over strategies for its appeal, said Edward Naughton, an intellectual-property lawyer with the Boston firm Brown Rudnick, in an interview Friday.
"The appeal process is an interesting one, because they get more time and are able to focus their arguments a little bit more on what the law should be, rather than what it currently is," Naughton said.
Appeals courts consider prior cases when making decisions, as Alsup did in his ruling, Naughton said. However, "they have a little bit more freedom to make rulings that embody policy decisions," he added.