GOOG Alphabet Inc

By Jack Nicas 

The seven-year legal battle between tech giants Google and Oracle Corp. just got new life.

Oracle on Friday filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that seeks to overturn a federal jury's decision last year that Google's use of Oracle software didn't violate copyright law.

Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., declined to comment.

The two companies have been battling over the issue since 2010, when Oracle first sued Google for using pieces of Oracle's Java software in Google's Android mobile software. The case has now gone through two federal trials and bounced around at appeals courts, including a brief stop at the U.S. Supreme Court. Oracle has sought as much as $9 billion in the case.

In the trial last year in San Francisco, the jury ruled Google's use of 11,000 lines of Java code was allowed under "fair use" provisions in federal copyright law. In Oracle's 155-page appeal on Friday, it called Google's "copying...classic unfair use" and said "Google reaped billions of dollars while leaving Oracle's Java business in tatters."

The fight is also at the center of one of the most acrimonious rivalries in Silicon Valley. After Google won the federal trial in May, Oracle ramped up its efforts to oppose Google in other arenas, including lobbying European antitrust regulators over Google's privacy policies.

Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2017 20:31 ET (01:31 GMT)

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