Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 55

12 

GOOGLE LLC v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC. 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

sales.  Its strategy was to release Android to device manu-
facturers for free and then use Android as a vehicle to col-
lect data on consumers and deliver behavioral ads.  With a 
free product available that included much of Oracle’s code
(and  thus  with  similar  programming  potential),  device
manufacturers no longer saw much reason to pay to embed 
the Java platform.

For  example,  before  Google  released  Android,  Amazon
paid for a license to embed the Java platform in Kindle de-
vices.  But after Google released Android, Amazon used the 
cost-free  availability  of  Android  to  negotiate  a  97.5%  dis-
count on its license fee with Oracle.  Evidence at trial simi-
larly showed that right after Google released Android, Sam-
sung’s  contract  with  Oracle  dropped  from  $40  million  to 
about $1 million.  Google contests none of this except to say 
that  Amazon  used  a  different  Java  platform,  Java  Micro
Edition instead of Java Standard Edition.  That difference 
is inconsequential because the former was simply a smaller 
subset of the latter.  Google copied code found in both plat-
forms.  The majority does not dispute—or even mention—
this enormous harm. 

Second,  Google  interfered  with  opportunities  for  Oracle
to  license  the  Java  platform  to  developers  of  smartphone
operating  systems.  Before  Google  copied  Oracle’s  code, 
nearly  every  mobile  phone  on  the  market  contained  the 
Java platform.  Oracle’s code was extraordinarily valuable 
to anybody who wanted to develop smartphones, which ex-
plains why Google tried no fewer than four times to license 
it.  The majority’s remark that Google also sought other li-
censes from Oracle, ante, at 33, does not change this central
fact.  Both parties agreed that Oracle could enter Google’s 
current market by licensing its declaring code.  But by cop-
ying the code and releasing Android, Google eliminated Or-
acle’s opportunity to license its code for that use. 

The majority writes off this harm by saying that the jury
could have found that Oracle might not have been able to