Google guilty of infringing Oracle's Java copyright

Internet giant Google has been found guilty of breaching copyright in a case brought by Oracle over its Java programming language.

But the US jury but was unable to agree on whether Google's actions constituted "fair use" under copyright law.

Oracle was asking for $1bn (£630m) in compensation in one of the biggest such technology lawsuits to date.

The language is used by many business applications as well as other software, such as the video game Minecraft.

The jury in San Francisco were asked to consider four questions on Oracle's claim that Google violated several of its patents and copyrights, but could only agree on the three.

Oracle claimed Google's Android system infringes intellectual property rights relating to the programming language.

The case did not centre on Google's use of Java itself - which is free for anyone to use without licence - but rather the Android-maker's use of 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers to write Java-compatible code.

Java was first released in 1995 and allows software to be run across computer platforms, rather than just being limited to one type of operating system.

Oracle - a business hardware and software provider - inherited the intellectual properties when it took over Java's original developer, Sun Microsystems, in 2009.

Oracle argued that by using its intellectual property, and then giving Android away for free, Google undermined the possibility of it licensing Java to mobile phone makers.