The legal issues between Google and Oracle are still moving along, with the most recent ruling settling a question that was left unanswered earlier on in the proceedings.

Judge William Alsup ruled yesterday, regarding the 37 Java APIs in question, that they were not subject to copyright protection, something that a jury had been unable to decide on when they ruled in Oracle’s favour early last month.

Part of his ruling reads “So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API.” This has allayed fears that a ruling in Oracle’s favour would restrict developers from coming up with differently-coded methods of carrying out a specific function.

Oracle has responded to this ruling, saying that they “…will vigorously pursue an appeal of this decision in order to maintain that protection and to continue to support the broader Java community of over 9 million developers and countless law abiding enterprises.”

Google’s comment reads: “The court’s decision upholds the principle that open and interoperable computer languages form an essential basis for software development. It’s a good day for collaboration and innovation.”

Source: AllThingsD