A few thoughts:

1. This is a denial of a petition for writ of certiorari, which is a fancy legal term for a request that the U.S. Supreme Court exercise its discretionary jurisdiction to consider the appeal. This means that the court can hear it or not, as it deems fit, and only if it sees some really pressing reason to do so.

2. The above standard is very tough to meet and only the rare case will do so.

3. Here, Google had prevailed on the copyright claims at the trial level because the trial judge, rather than applying precedents mechanically, had rather bravely attempted to synthesize a byzantine body of law through what I believe was a brilliant synthesis of copyright law as applied to software interfaces that allowed him to conclude that APIs were not copyrightable (see my earlier assessment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050490#up_4051761). On appeal to the Federal Circuit, however, the court rejected this attempted synthesis and applied conventional precedents to conclude that APIs were indeed subject to copyright protection. Even in doing so, the Federal Circuit did not grant judgment for Oracle but instead sent the case back to the trial court to determine if Google could prevail on its defense that its mirroring of the java APIs was a fair use of otherwise protectable code and therefore not infringing.

4. In exercising its discretion whether to hear an appeal of this type, the Supreme Court considers not only the importance of the issues raised by the appeal but further considers whether such issues are ripe for determination by the highest court of the land. What that means is that the court is not interested in addressing questions that may prove academic to the litigants in the case. It is interested only in resolving cases in which the issue it is being asked to resolve is critical to the outcome of the case. Here, that standard was not met. Why? Because the appeal is from a case that Google has not yet lost. Should Google have the case tried on remand, and prevail on its fair use argument such as to win definitively on the copyright issues, then there is no need for it to obtain a determination that APIs are not copyrightable at all. In such a case, that latter issue becomes moot. Thus, in denying Google's writ, the Supreme Court may well have concluded that it is simply premature to take up the API issues until all of them have been first finally decided by the lower courts.

5. The other major fact to note here is that a denial of this sort of writ by the Supreme Court has no legal significance in terms of ruling on the merits of the claims presented. The denial simply means that the court is not interested in taking up those issues at this time. It is entirely possible that the case could be tried in the lower court, that Google could lose on all copyright issues in that trial, that Google could appeal once again, that the Supreme Court would eventually grant a future writ to hear these very issues, and that the Supreme Court could rule in Google's favor that APIs are not copyrightable at all.

6. Having lost on the copyright issue before the Federal Circuit, Google has a pretty tough fight before it in this case. For the same reasons, though, that Judge Alsup had originally concluded that copyright law should not even protect APIs, it has a potentially compelling fair use argument to make and may therefore win on that issue. If it does not, it can once again appeal to the Supreme Court for redress. That would be a long shot, but it is possible.

7. The only thing certain about this case now is that a long, drawn out legal battle will follow before anything is definitely decided. The issues are important for our tech age and, in this case and otherwise in the federal courts, only time will tell whether Judge Alsup's original synthesis (or some variation) favoring freer interface use or the Federal Circuit's maximalist IP views will ultimately prevail.