Google Wins Tech Company Feud

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tech companies everywhere were keeping a close eye on a legal fight between Google and Oracle. And when the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the case yesterday, those companies were relieved. The high court came down on Google's side in a copyright beef with Oracle. The ruling said Google did nothing wrong in copying code to develop the Android operating system — the one that is used on most of the world's smartphones. To create Android, Google combined millions of its new lines of code with 11,500 lines of code copyrighted by Oracle's own Java platform. Oracle sued, seeking billions in damages. But the Supreme Court sided 6-2 with Google, describing the copying of the base code as “fair use.” Most tech companies had rooted for the justices to side with Google in the dispute.