It’s been nearly a decade and yet there is still no end in sight. No, it’s not the Samsung vs. Apple patent circus, which seems to have mostly died down.

This one is between Google and Oracle and the final results could have widespread repercussions across the entire software industry.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit just ruled that Google, in fact, violated Oracle’s copyrights when it used Java API in Android and could end up owing the Java owner more than $8.8 billion in damages. The legal drama between the two tech giants is definitely worth a documentary or even a film, especially given how it practically divided the software community into camps. Unlike the Samsung v Apple cases, the principles and laws involved will affect more than just Android and Google but the entire software and tech industry as a whole.

And, of course, it will eventually trickle down to consumers as well. At the very heart of the legal battle is the principle of fair use and the question of whether APIs can be cpyrighted in the first place.

APIs, short for Application Programming Interfaces, are basically like shortcuts or entries in a table of contents for a recipe book. They themselves don’t contain code but point to code that actually performs certain functions. Programmers use APIs in order to avoid having to rewrite pieces of code over and over again, which could lead to errors that are harder to spot when they’re scattered all over the place.

Read More:-https://ochoochogift..com.ng/2018/03/google-could-owe-oracle-88-billion-over.html