Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL) has recently appealed against the verdict of the lawsuit it had lost to Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google in May.
The two companies were embroiled in a legal tiff for the past six years in which Oracle had sought $9.3 billion as compensation from Google for unauthorized usage of Java APIs in its Android operating system. However, in May 2016, a 10-member jury gave a verdict in favor of Google stating that there were no copyright violations of Oracle Java APIs. According to the “fair use” provision of the U.S. copyright law, the use of copyrighted material was allowed in certain circumstances based on the scope and purpose (as in commercial or non-commercial) of use.
Per media reports, last Wednesday Oracle appealed to the San Francisco U.S. District Court to reconsider the verdict. The filing stated that "Google's financial rewards are as 'conspicuous' as they come, and unprecedented in the case law." Oracle claims that Google has gained over $42 billion from Android powered by its Java APIs and therefore demanded a share of its profit.
However, Google had earlier defended itself saying that the Java code was free and open and there have been no copyright infringements. In fact, Google’s stance was also supported by a majority of the Java programming community (including most of Silicon Valley) which believed that a decision in Oracle’s favor could prove detrimental to innovation as programmers use open source APIs across various interfaces for developing codes.
Oracle currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A couple of better-ranked stocks in the sector include Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:ADBE) and Castlight Health, Inc. (NYSE:CSLT) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
ORACLE CORP (ORCL): Free Stock Analysis Report
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