Google-oracle trial begins today, could change android forever

Two tech heavyweights are about to start the legal fight of the century in a California courtroom Google and Oracle the high-profile battle over intellectual property begins today with jury selection. The stakes are no less than the future of Android. Oracle sued Google over its use of java, a software platform Oracle obtained from its acquisition of Sun Microsystems earlier that same year. Java is actually free to use without licensing it, but when Google developed its Android mobile operating system, it used many of Sun’s Java APIs (application programming interfaces) so Android developers could create apps with Java. Google’s argument is that programming languages are merely the tools software developers use and aren’t subject to copyright, though the programs they make with them are. It says Oracle is trying to copyright an idea rather than an expression — one of the main distinctions about what can be copyrighted and what can’t.