Can you hear us now? SCOTUS says app developers needn’t reinvent the wheel

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Abstract: After more than a decade of litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court has resolved a dispute between tech giants in a way that has software developers breathing a sigh of relief. The Court held that the copyright doctrine of fair use permits developers to continue to build off of the work of others in many cases without fear of infringement liability — which, in this case, could have meant billions of dollars in damages. This article summarizes the Court’s broad reading of fair use in the application programming interface context. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., No. 18-956 (U.S. April 5, 2021).