Image Source: Pixabay

As Wired reported today,

The legal battle between Oracle and Google is about to come to an end. And nothing less is as stake than the future of programming.

The presentation of evidence in trial itself ended this past Friday, with jurors returning today for final arguments and jury instruction.

Here's a good summary of how we got here and what happens next, ending with:

The Oracle vs Google courtroom drama started in way back in 2010, a year after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and along with it the rights to Java patents. It began initially as a copyright infringement case and Oracle sued Google over its use of 37 Java APIs in its Android OS. In 2012, a jury in a District Court ruled in favour of Google, following which the case was sent up to an appeals court and was reversed and then appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case. In the saga that continues, the tech titans are back, fighting it out again. This time the bone of contention is the ‘fair use’. The debate rages on between the two whether Google’s coding of Android falls under fair use of Oracle’s property. Oracle stands to gain $9 billion from Google if the court rules in their favour. Read the arguments that lawyers from both the sides put up here.

The case has seen a volley of arguments and rebuttals from both parties vehemently standing their ground. The real loss here though has been to the software industry. Developers might now think twice about using open source — killing a major chunk of innovation in the business.

With $9B and the definition of 'fair use' at stake, investors should be watching the outcome of this case closely.