Oracle Settles Google Copyright Lawsuit For $0

Oracle on Wednesday agreed to settle its current copyright lawsuit for $0. The settlement agreement led Judge William Alsup to ask “is there a catch I need to be aware of” to which Oracle said the settlement will clear the way for its partial appeal with the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.

Based on the amount of TimSort.java used by Google (9 lines of code) the company would have likely paid no more than $150,000 in damages, however Oracle decided to end the case so they could move on to their partial appeal with no outstanding issues. Google in the meantime has 14 days to file with the judge for legal cost reimbursement which will be paid by Oracle although the tech firm is expected to contest those charges which will be decided by judge Alsup.

When the lawsuit first began Oracle asked for billions of dollars in renumeration. When the court case went bad Google offered Oracle a half-percent of Android revenue license on one contested patent and 0.015 percent of a second patent. Oracle refused the offer.

Google’s “Chief Java Architect” Joshua Bloch admitted in the case that he may have used nine lines of code from Oracle’s Java code for Google Android,however he later said he reused an algorithm he designed almost ten years earlier. Block then called copying “good engineering practice.”

In both phases of the trial the jury found it difficult to reach consensus and eventually agreed that code had been duplicated but no infringement existed on behalf of Google Android.

The case has set one precedent in which it confirmed the non-copyrightable nature of APIs.