The verdict, delivered Monday after a week of jury deliberation, is a partial victory for Oracle in its lawsuit against Google, but Oracle will have to wait longer -- possibly for a retrial -- to see whether Google will escape liability with its claim of fair use.

Google's attorney, Robert Van Nest, immediately told the judge that Google would file for a mistrial. Google's argument will be that the same jury must decide both the copyright infringement and fair use issues. The judge told both sides to submit legal briefs on that issue.

As soon as the verdict was delivered Monday, the trial moved into the patents phase of the case, with Oracle making its opening statement. The trial is in three parts, to address copyrights, patents, and then any damages Oracle should receive.

But although the patents phase is under way, the copyright phase is far from concluded. As well as the outstanding issue of fair use, Judge William Alsup , who is hearing the case, must decide whether Oracle's Java APIs (application programming interfaces) can be copyrighted at all under U.S. law.

Historically, APIs have not been considered copyrightable. But Oracle argues that the the "structure, sequence and organization" of the 166 API packages in Java are sufficiently complex to merit protection.