Google wins ‘fair use’ court case against Oracle

Google has won a major US court battle brought by software firm Oracle over Google’s use of Java in its Android smartphone operating system. The San Francisco jury ruled that Google’s use of the software amounted to ‘fair use’ as it was part of a larger system which the tech giant created for a new purpose. The news is expected to be welcomed by developers who generally rely on free access to application programming interfaces (APIs) to develop third-party services. Oracle is expected to appeal.