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Oracle has filed an appeal in its copyright lawsuit against Google

A jury ruled in Google’s favor in May.

Katherine Welles / Shutterstock

Oracle has appealed a May ruling that favored Google’s use of software that Oracle claimed did not fall under fair use.

The appeal, filed Friday, drags out a dispute that has roots going back to 2010, when Oracle first sued Google for using the software, which Oracle owns.

Free speech and copyright experts have been up in arms about the case. The original suit is fundamentally about whether the common Silicon Valley practice of using open source technology created by other corporations constitutes a copyright violation, as Oracle’s lawyers have argued it does.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Legal Director Corynne McSherry said in a statement, “It’s important for many technology developers, large and small. A finding of fair use here, while rooted in the facts of this case, could set important precedents for the use of APIs by everyone down the road — including Google.”


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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