The final tally is Google 3, Oracle 0 in the software giants' Android-vs-Java fight
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google will not have to pay Oracle anything for violating 37 Java copyrights, because they are not copyrightable, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
The ruling -- the final verdict in a landmark court case between two Silicon Valley titans -- affirms the industry's long-held belief that certain key bits of software code that help applications talk to one another are fair game for anyone to use.
Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) claimed that Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android mobile operating system violated copyrights held by Oarcle's Sun Microsystems division, which created the Java software that much of Android is based on.
Android originally used several lines of code that Sun had written for Java. That code, called application programming interfaces, or APIs, are essentially a way for apps to communicate with the operating system. Since Java is an open-source software, its APIs are generally free and available for public use.
Judge William Alsup ruled Thursday that those APIs are not copyrightable because they are so basic and fundamental.
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