Today's a good day for the folks at Google, as a jury has ruled that the company did not infringe upon Oracle patents related to Java with Android. The suit from Oracle alleged that Google was guilty of eight counts of infringement on two patents related to Java code, and the battle between these two companies began when Oracle originally sued Google back in 2010. In response to the news of the verdict, Google said that the ruling "was a victory not just for Google but the entire Android ecosystem." The jury did find that Android infringed on Oracle copyrights with some Java APIs, but it could not come to a unanimous decision on whether or not Google's use of those APIs was fair use, so that verdict is still up in the air.
So what's next? Not everything related to the Google v. Oracle battle is over quite yet, as the judge in the case must still decide whether some portions of Oracle's Java APIs can be copyrighted at all. Additionally, we've yet to hear anything official from Oracle regarding today's verdict, but it seems likely that the company will appeal the ruling. For the time being, though, I'm sure Google wouldn't mind popping open a little champagne and celebrating both today's victory and the recent completion of its acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
