Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

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

27 

Opinion of the Court 

Amici  supporting  Google  have  summarized  these  same
points—points  that  witnesses  explained  to  the  jury.    See, 
e.g., Brief for Copyright Scholars as Amici Curiae 25 (“[T]he 
portions of Java SE that Google reimplemented may have 
helped preserve consistency of use within the larger Java
developer community”); Brief for Microsoft Corporation as 
Amicus Curiae 22 (“[A]llowing reasonable fair use of func-
tional code enables innovation that creates new opportuni-
ties for the whole market to grow”); Brief for 83 Computer
Scientists as Amici Curiae 20 (“Reimplementing interfaces
fueled  widespread  adoption  of  popular  programming  lan-
guages” (emphasis deleted)); Brief for R Street Institute et 
al. as Amici Curiae 15–20 (describing Oracle’s reimplemen-
tation of other APIs); see also Brief for American Antitrust
Institute as Amicus Curiae 7 (“Copyright on  largely func-
tional elements of software that [have] become an industry 
standard gives a copyright holder anti-competitive power”).
These and related facts convince us that the “purpose and 
character” of Google’s copying was transformative—to the 
point where this factor too weighs in favor of fair use.

There are two other considerations that are often taken 
up under the first factor: commerciality and good faith.  The 
text of §107 includes various noncommercial uses, such as
teaching  and  scholarship,  as  paradigmatic  examples  of 
privileged  copying.  There  is  no  doubt  that  a  finding  that
copying was not commercial in nature tips the scales in fa-
vor of fair use.  But the inverse is not necessarily true, as 
many common fair uses are indisputably commercial.  For 
instance, the text of §107 includes examples like “news re-
porting,” which is often done for commercial profit.  So even 
though Google’s use was a commercial endeavor—a fact no
party disputed, see 886 F. 3d, at 1197—that is not disposi-
tive of the first factor, particularly in light of the inherently 
transformative  role  that  the  reimplementation  played  in
the new Android system.

As for bad faith, our decision in Campbell expressed some