Opinion ID: 4258388
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: google’s cross-appeal

Text: Google cross-appeals from the district court’s final judgment solely to “preserv[e] its claim that the declaraORACLE AMERICA, INC. v. GOOGLE LLC 55 tions/SSO are not protected by copyright law.” CrossAppellant Br. 83. Specifically, Google maintains that the declaring code and SSO are: (1) an unprotected “method of operation” under 17 U.S.C. § 102(b), because they allow programmers to operate the pre-written programs of the Java language; and (2) subject to the merger doctrine. We resolved these issues against Google in the first appeal, finding that the declaring code and the SSO of the 37 API packages at issue are entitled to copyright protection. Oracle, 750 F.3d at 1354. Google did not petition this court for rehearing and instead filed a petition for a writ of certiorari asking the Supreme Court to determine whether our copyrightability determination was in error. Oracle responded to the petition, and the Supreme Court invited the Solicitor General to express the views of the United States. The government agreed that Oracle’s computer code is copyrightable, and the Supreme Court denied Google’s petition in June 2015. Google, Inc. v. Oracle Am., Inc., 135 S. Ct. 2887 (2015). Google neither asks the panel for relief on the copyrightability issue nor offers any arguments on that issue. We remain convinced that our earlier copyrightability decision was consistent with Congress’s repeated directives on the subject. Accordingly, we provide no relief to Google on its cross-appeal, finding a ruling on it unnecessary.