The Oracle v. Google trial rolled into its fifth day on Friday, beginning with videotaped deposition testimony from Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Later in the day, a former Sun scientist in charge of open source testified, as well as a key Android programmer.
The two software giants are in court to resolve a lawsuit that Oracle filed in 2010, accusing Google of infringing copyrights related to 37 Java APIs. An initial ruling was a clean sweep for Google, finding that APIs couldn’t be copyrighted at all, but that result was overturned on appeal. Now Google’s facing a second jury trial, and its only available defense is that its use of Java APIs is “fair use.” Oracle acquired the Java copyrights after buying Sun Microsystems in 2009.