> I'm not worried about Google in the least, I am however concerned about the precedent this sets

It's legal precedential value is limited, because it was a copyright decision in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC).

The general principle for a precedent is that precedent for court X is set by the appeals court that hears appeals from X, and the appeals court that hears appeals from that appeals court, and so on.

So, for example, the district courts in the 9th Circuit (which covers the west coast tech companies) gets precedent from the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and from the Supreme Court. In particular, this is the appeals path for copyright cases.

The appeals path changes for a few special subjects. Patent appeals from all of the Federal district courts, for example, go to CAFC. So, in matters of patents, a district court in the 9th district would look to CAFC for patent precedent, not the 9th circuit appeals court.

Oracle sued Google for both copyright infringement and patent infringement. The parties were OK enough with the outcome of the patent part of the case that no one appealed that, but the copyright decision was appealed.

You might expect that this means the appeal would go to the appeals court for the 9th Circuit, because only copyright issues were being appealed, but that's not how it works. Where the appeal goes is decided by what was at issue in the original case, not by what was at issue in the appeal.

The rule is that if a case has both a special subject, such as patents, that points to CAFC, and other subjects, such as copyright, that point to the appeals court for the circuit the district court is in, the appeal goes to CAFC. CAFC handles the whole thing.

When CAFC gets a subject that normally does not come to them, but got there because it was attached to a case that also had a subject that does go to them, the rule is that they are supposed to follow the precedent of the appeals court for the circuit the district court is in. They don't set precedent in that district.

For example, if two companies sued over copyright in the 9th Circuit, with no other issues involved that would deflect the normal appeals path away from the 9th circuit's appeals court, the district could would look to that appeals court and the Supreme Court for precedent. CAFC opinions on copyright would at most be interesting opinions it might look to for insight, just like it might look to courts of appeals for other circuits, but only it's own circuit's appeals court and the Supreme Court would be precedent it has to actually follow.

PS: I think we'd be better off if CAFC just got the patent appeals. If a case has both copyright and patent issues, send patent appeals issues to CAFC and copyright appeals issues to the circuit's appeals court. At the trial level we merge cases that would normally be in different courts into one (e.g., if a case has both state and federal issues, it goes to federal court and the federal court handles the state issues).

That makes sense at trial court level because they involve examining witnesses, examining experts, and similar. If different issues were heard in different courts, many of those witnesses would have to go to multiple courts. It could be a major hardship on them. You'd want to hold them all in the same area, at near the same time, to minimize travel. That could be hard to schedule.

Appeals courts, on the other hand, just work off the transcript from the trial. The only people needed there are the lawyers arguing the case. The lawyers for appeals are usually more specialized than trial lawyers, so there are quite possibly different lawyers handling the different issues in the appeal.

It would not be much of a hardship, if any, for different issues to go to different appeals courts, as long as a little care is taken with scheduling.

Heck, it might even be less of a hardship. Imagine you are a copyright appeals lawyer in the 9th Circuit. Normally all your appeals court appearances are in the 9th Circuit, and you have a few cases going on there. Then some stupid mixed patent/copyright case comes along, and no you've got a case on the other side of the country to deal with.