Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 7

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

large  part  “interoperable”).  872  F. Supp.  2d,  at  977.    In-
deed, one of Sun’s slogans was “ ‘write once, run anywhere.’ ”  
886 F. 3d, at 1186. 

Shortly  after  acquiring  the  Android  firm,  Google  began
talks with Sun about the possibility of licensing the entire
Java platform for its new smartphone technology.  Oracle, 
872 F. Supp. 2d, at 978.  But Google did not want to insist 
that  all  programs  written  on  the  Android  platform  be  in-
teroperable.  886 F. 3d, at 1187.  As Android’s founder ex-
plained, “[t]he whole idea about [an] open source [platform] 
is to have very, very few restrictions on what people can do
with it,” App. 659, and Sun’s interoperability policy would 
have undermined that free and open business model.  Ap-
parently, for reasons related to this disagreement, Google’s 
negotiations  with  Sun  broke  down.  Google  then  built  its 
own platform.

The record indicates that roughly 100 Google engineers 
worked  for  more  than  three  years  to  create  Google’s  An-
droid platform software.  Id., at 45, 117, 212.  In doing so, 
Google tailored the Android platform to smartphone tech-
nology, which differs from desktop and laptop computers in
important ways.  A smartphone, for instance, may run on a
more limited battery or take advantage of GPS technology. 
Id.,  at  197–198.    The  Android  platform  offered  program-
mers the ability to program for that environment.  To build 
the platform, Google wrote millions of lines of new code.  Be-
cause  Google  wanted  millions  of  programmers,  familiar 
with Java, to be able easily to work with its new Android
platform, it also copied roughly 11,500 lines of code from the 
Java SE program.  886 F. 3d, at 1187.  The copied lines of 
code are part of a tool called an Application Programming 
Interface, or API. 

What is an API?  The Federal Circuit described an API 
as a tool that “allow[s] programmers to use . . . prewritten
code to build certain functions into their own programs, ra-
ther than write their own code to perform those functions