WASHINGTON – Re:Create today issued the below statement following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in favor of Google in the Google v Oracle fair use case: 

“Today’s Supreme Court decision is a win for fair use, computer programmers and American consumers. The court makes it clear that programmers can use declaring code without permission as a fair use in order to write their own new, creative implementing code. Copyright’s purpose is to promote, not hinder creativity, and the Supreme Court reaffirmed the importance of fair use in finding that balance. It made clear that Oracle’s attempt here would have had a negative impact on the creativity of programmers,” said Re:Create Executive Director Joshua Lamel.

“The court affirms an important point: aggressive, over-enforcement of copyright hinders creativity and goes against the purpose of copyright. Fair use serves as a guard rail against anti-creativity enforcement attempts.

“While we are disappointed the court did not determine if declaring code is copyrightable to begin with, the court makes it clear in its 6-2 decision that, ‘In our view, for the reasons just described, the declaring code is, if copyrightable at all, further than are most computer programs (such as the implementing code) from the core of copyright.’”