Guodong Fu
The ongoing battle for clarity on the limitation of United States copyright protection in the software industry has yielded inconsistent results over the past ten years. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., currently before the Supreme Court, may finally shed some light on the status of copyright protection as applied to software. In deciding the case, the Court must balance the four fair use factors as applied to software copyrights. The Court will likely navigate a fine line to balance maintaining a market of interoperability with fair competition. This Essay argues that the Supreme Court should maintain a market of interoperability and fair competition by affirming the Federal Circuit’s decision, while providing clarity on the factor test used in determining the applicability of the fair use doctrine.