2020 Intellectual Property Primer: Cases to Watch this Year; Lexology, Janaury 27, 2020

Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP - Michael J. Garvin, William H. Oldach III and Aaron M. Williams, Lexology; 2020 Intellectual Property Primer: Cases to Watch this Year

"2020 is likely to be a busy and influential year for intellectual property cases before the United States Supreme Court. The Court is expected to make a number of rulings and decisions that are likely to impact the future landscape of copyright, patent, and trademark law.

Copyright’s Fair Use Doctrine: In what is shaping up to be the main event of this year’s Supreme Court calendar—at least for intellectual property practitioners—the Court will hear oral argument in Google v. Oracle later this year. The case is the culmination of a decade’s worth of litigation involving two of world’s largest tech companies.

Oracle has accused Google of stealing copyrighted pieces of Java source code for use in Google’s Android smartphones. Google has argued that the Java software language Oracle accuses it of stealing is: (1) too functional to be protected by copyright law; and (2) is subject to copyright’s fair use doctrine.

The Supreme Court will consider both issues. The case is particularly noteworthy because the Court has never issued binding precedent related to the copyrightability of software and it has not issued a fair use decision in over twenty-five years."