The world's second richest man once sued Google for $9,000,000,000 in historic lawsuit
One of the biggest legal battles in the technology world occurred between Oracle and Google back in 2012, and the former's co-founder Larry Ellison, who is now the second richest man in the world, could have increased his net worth by $9,000,000,000 if victorious.
Larry Ellison has been known for his ruthless attitude to competition in the tech world, having once declared that it's not enough for Oracle to win, and that others must lose too.
While it is his multiple decade-long rivalry with Microsoft and Bill Gates that many focus on, one of Ellison's most famous battles came when he butted horns with Google over a copyright dispute, and the ramifications on the wider industry threatened to be significant.
Why did Oracle sue Google?
As reported by WIRED, Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. centered around copyright law - specifically in how it applied to computer code, programming languages, and application programming interfaces (APIs).
In essence, Oracle claimed that Google had used around 11,000 lines of code originating from Sun Microsystems and Java (which Ellison's company had acquired two years earlier) in the source code for the Android operating system.
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The primary argument indicated that the APIs present within Android's source code were eligible for copyright and were owned by Oracle, and thus Ellison sought roughly $8,800,000,000 in damages from Google.
Owning roughly 40% of Oracle, a victory against Google in this particular case would have significantly boosted Ellison's net worth, which stood at around $36 billion.
Moving to the present day though this victory, while still significant, represents just 3.46% of Ellison's total net worth of $254 billion, as he recently overtook major names like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos to become the second richest man in the world, according to Forbes.
Who won between Oracle and Google?
Like most major court cases, there hasn't necessarily been a concrete 'winner' in the legal battle between Google and Oracle, although both sides would argue that they emerged victorious.
Multiple rounds of decisions and separate counter cases landed in favor of either side, and it all began at the District Court level, where Google was initially favored on two separate occasions.
The case was then escalated to Federal Court, where both decisions were subsequently reversed and placed in Oracles favor. This indicated that APIs are, in fact, copyrightable, although Google claimed that it fell within the guidelines of fair use.
This was ruled as incorrect by Federal Courts in 2018, although Google successfully appealed to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in Google's favor and cemented that it was fair use after all.
While most would argue that Google (and the wider tech industry) 'won' this particular case, Oracle still claimed victory as it achieved the landmark decision that computer code and APIs can now be copyrighted.
Speaking at the All Things D conference back in 2012 following the original lawsuit, Ellison expressed that "we won on infringement" as "the jury found that Google infringed on our copyrights."
Oracle hasn't been able to recoup the significant damages that it sought as part of the suit though, but the 'moral victory' might be more pertinent for Ellison, especially as he's certainly not lacking in funds over a decade later.