Copyright Alliance Supports Oracle in Appeal Against Google

Today, the Copyright Alliance announced that it filed an amicus curiae brief supporting Oracle’s appeal of the verdict in its copyright infringement case against Google. The brief spotlights the multifaceted misinterpretation of copyright law in the court’s decision and backs Oracle’s suit to protect innovation everywhere. The filing also reinforces the Alliance’s assertion that the court incorrectly deemed Google’s use of Java as transformative and too narrowly defined the available market for Oracle’s Java APIs.

According to Keith Kupferschmid, Copyright Alliance CEO, “The district court judgment not only undermines well-established law, but significantly also makes it too easy for opportunistic and predatory businesses to take a copyrighted work from one medium, adapt it to another, and claim it is transformative.”

The Copyright Alliance filed the brief to help ensure that courts understand the underlying purpose of copyright and the role fair use plays in furthering that purpose.

Kupferschmid continued, “If the ruling is allowed to stand, we are deeply concerned about the implications for creators and innovators who depend on copyright law to earn a living and have careers making new software innovations.”
The complete filing can be found here.

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ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE

The Copyright Alliance is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest and educational organization representing the copyright interests of over 1.8 million individual creators and over 13,000 organizations in the United States, across the spectrum of copyright disciplines. The Copyright Alliance is dedicated to advocating policies that promote and preserve the value of copyright, and to protecting the rights of creators and innovators. For more information, please visit www.copyrightalliance.org.

For media inquiries, contact:

Eileen Bramlet

VP Communications

ebramlet@copyrightalliance.org

571.228.1906

You can download the pdf version of this statement here.