Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 15

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

11 

Opinion of the Court 

and organizational structure contained in the 37 Sun Java
API packages that it copied “constitutes a ‘fair use’ under 
the Copyright Act?”  App. 294.  After three days of deliber-
ation the jury answered the question in the affirmative.  Id., 
at 295.  Google had shown fair use.

Oracle  again  appealed  to  the  Federal  Circuit.    And  the 
Circuit again reversed the District Court.  The Federal Cir-
cuit assumed all factual questions in Google’s favor.  But, it 
said, the question whether those facts constitute a “fair use” 
is a question of law.  886 F. 3d, at 1193.  Deciding that ques-
tion of law, the court held that Google’s use of the Sun Java 
API was not a fair use.  It wrote that “[t]here is nothing fair 
about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for 
the same purpose and function as the original in a compet-
ing  platform.”  Id.,  at  1210.  It  remanded  the  case  again,
this time for a trial on damages.

Google then filed a petition for certiorari in this Court.  It 
asked us to review the Federal Circuit’s determinations as 
to  both  copyrightability  and  fair  use.  We  granted  its
petition. 

III 
A 
Copyright and patents, the Constitution says, are to “pro-
mote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing 
for  limited  Times  to  Authors  and  Inventors  the  exclusive 
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”  Art. I, 
§8, cl. 8.  Copyright statutes and case law have made clear
that copyright has practical objectives.  It grants an author
an  exclusive  right  to  produce  his  work  (sometimes  for  a 
hundred years or more), not as a special reward, but in or-
der to encourage the production of works that others might 
reproduce  more  cheaply.  At  the  same  time,  copyright 
has  negative  features.   Protection  can  raise  prices  to  con-
sumers.  It can impose special costs, such as the cost of con-
tacting owners to obtain reproduction permission.  And the