Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 59.0

16 

GOOGLE LLC v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC. 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

the copyright holder’s market.

Regardless, Google fairs no better on transformative use. 
A court generally cannot find fair use unless the copier’s use 
is transformative.10  A work is “transformative” if it “adds 
something new, with a further purpose or different charac-
ter, altering the first with new expression, meaning, or mes-
sage.”  Campbell, 510 U. S., at 579.  This question is “guided
by the examples [of fair use] given in the preamble to §107.” 
Id., at 578.  Those examples include: “criticism, comment, 
news  reporting,  teaching  . . . ,  scholarship,  or  research.” 
§107.  Although these examples are not exclusive, they are
illustrative,  and  Google’s  repurposing  of  Java  code  from
larger  computers  to  smaller  computers  resembles  none  of
them.  Google did not use Oracle’s code to teach or reverse 
engineer  a  system  to  ensure  compatibility.    Instead,  to 
“avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh,” id., at 
580, Google used the declaring code for the same exact pur-
pose  Oracle  did.    As  the  Federal  Circuit  correctly  deter-
mined, “[t]here is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted 
work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and func-
tion as the original in a competing platform.”  886 F. 3d, at 
1210. 

The majority acknowledges that Google used the copied 
declaring code “for the same reason” Oracle  did.   Ante,  at 
25.  So, by turns, the majority transforms the definition of
“transformative.”    Now,  we  are  told,  “transformative” 
simply means—at least for computer code—a use that will
help others “create new products.”  Ibid; accord, ante, at 26 
(Google’s copying “can further the development of computer
programs”). 

—————— 

10 Although  “transformative  use  is  not  absolutely  necessary”  every
time, Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569, 579, and n. 11 
(1994) (emphasis added), as a general matter “the fair use doctrine has 
always precluded a use that ‘supersedes the use of the original,’ ” Harper, 
471 U. S., at 550 (brackets omitted).