Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 12

8 

GOOGLE LLC v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC. 

Opinion of the Court 

that actually carries it out.  (For an illustration of this tech-
nology, see Appendix B, infra.)

Now we can return to the copying at issue in this case. 
Google  did  not  copy  the  task-implementing  programs,  or
implementing  code,  from  the  Sun  Java  API.    It  wrote  its 
own task-implementing programs, such as those that would 
determine which of two integers is the greater or carry out
any other desired (normally far more complex) task.  This 
implementing code constitutes the vast majority of both the 
Sun Java API and the API that Google created for Android. 
App. 212.  For most of the packages in its new API, Google
also wrote its own declaring code.  For 37 packages, how-
ever, Google copied the declaring code from the Sun Java
API.  Id., at 106–107.  As just explained, that means that, 
for  those  37  packages,  Google  necessarily  copied  both  the 
names given to particular tasks and the grouping of those 
tasks into classes and packages. 

In doing so, Google copied that portion of the Sun Java 
API that allowed programmers expert in the Java program-
ming  language  to  use  the  “task  calling”  system  that  they
had already learned.  As Google saw it, the 37 packages at 
issue  included  those  tasks  that  were  likely  to  prove  most 
useful to programmers working on applications for mobile 
devices.  In fact, “three of these packages were . . . funda-
mental to being able to use the Java language at all.”  Ora-
cle, 872 F. Supp. 2d, at 982.  By using the same declaring 
code  for  those  packages,  programmers  using  the  Android 
platform can rely on the method calls that they are already
familiar with to call up particular tasks (e.g., determining
which of two integers is the greater); but Google’s own im-
plementing programs carry out those tasks.  Without that 
copying, programmers would need to learn an entirely new 
system to call up the same tasks. 

We  add  that  the  Android  platform  has  been  successful. 
Within five years of its release in 2007, Android-based de-
vices  claimed  a  large  share  of  the  United  States  market.