Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc., 593 U.S. 1 (2021), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States related to the nature of computer code and copyright law. The dispute centered on the use of parts of the Java programming language's application programming interfaces (APIs) and about 11,000 lines of source code, which are owned by Oracle (through subsidiary, Oracle America, Inc., originating from Sun Microsystems), within early versions of the Android operating system by Google. Google has since transitioned Android to a copyright-unburdened engine without the source code,^{[citation needed]} and has admitted to using the APIs but claimed this was within fair use.

Oracle initiated the suit arguing that the APIs were copyrightable, seeking US$8.8 billion in damages from Google's sales and licensing of the earlier infringing versions of Android. While two District Court-level jury trials found in favor of Google, the Federal Circuit court reversed both decisions, holding that APIs are copyrightable in 2014 and that Google's use does not fall under fair use in 2018. Google successfully petitioned to the Supreme Court to hear the case in the 2019 term, focusing on the copyrightability of APIs and subsequent fair use; the case was delayed to the 2020 term due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In April 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6–2 decision that Google's use of the Java APIs served an organizing function and fell within the four factors of fair use, bypassing the question on the copyrightability of the APIs. The decision reversed the Federal Circuit ruling and remanded the case for further review.

The case has been of significant interest within the tech and software industries, as numerous computer programs and software libraries, particularly in open source, are developed by recreating the functionality of APIs from commercial or competing products to aid developers in interoperability between different systems or platforms.

Java was originally developed at Sun Microsystems starting in December 1990. It included a new programming language, a virtual machine, and a set of libraries for use with the language. These libraries are documented for programmers via application programming interfaces (APIs), which tell programmers what information to provide to library functions and what results to expect back, eliminating any need for the programmer to know how the library they are using does what it does. These libraries together provide the "Java virtual machine" which programmers write programs to use (run upon). The common way in which a common set of libraries are used across all "Java virtual machines" allows for interoperability, or as marketed by Sun, "Write once, run anywhere"; a programmer need only create one version of their software which, because of the single group of APIs common to all Java virtual machines, can thus be run on any computing platform that supports Java.

The Java language was released to the public in 1995, under the Sun Community Source License, making the source code freely available but requiring that products using the code were maintained to the Java standard, and that any commercial derivative works were licensed by Sun. While anyone could program in the language itself, Sun maintained the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Mobile Edition (Java ME) libraries, provided to users as pre-compiled Java bytecode, and their respective APIs, as well as the Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs) that tested an implementation against the Java standard. Over 2006 and 2007, due to pressure from developers, Sun changed the license of the various Java packages to use the GNU General Public License with a "classpath exception", allowing developers the access necessary to make derivative works and the ability to release applications under a different license. This led to the OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit), first released in 2007. Sun retained strong control over the language and standards itself, licensing the necessary elements like TCKs for commercial users. At this time, Sun's business model changed to focusing on licensing of the Java platform to embedded devices, particularly mobile phones, and had already made licensing deals with Nokia, Motorola, and Research In Motion.

Android, Inc. was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White to develop a mobile phone platform. Google purchased Android in 2005 and continued developing the Android operating system. During the development of Android, Google wanted to incorporate the Java SE libraries. Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt had approached Sun's president Jonathan I. Schwartz about licensing the Java libraries for use in Android. Sun offered a licensing deal of between US$30 and 50 million. Schmidt said Google would have paid for that license, but they were concerned that Sun had also requested some shared control of Android along with the fee. Google states that they wanted more control in order to open source the language and allow third parties to take better advantage of its code; Oracle states that Sun refused because Google's intention was essentially to fork Java to a Google version of the language, and to prevent it being inter-operable with other versions, an idea which was "anathema" to the "write once run anywhere" basis of the language. Because of these differences of view, the negotiations failed to reach a deal and Sun refused Google a license for Java.

At this point in time, the OpenJDK implementation offered by Sun was not as mature or complete as the Java Standard Edition. Instead of licensing Java, Google chose to develop a cleanroom version of the Java Standard Edition libraries, developing the libraries from a completely fresh start without any access to Sun's code. This became the engine behind Android's Dalvik virtual machine, a core part of the new system. Part of the virtual machine included 37 API calls and around 11,500 lines of code deemed central to Java, which were taken from Apache Harmony, an open-source cleanroom Java implementation developed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Prior to this, the ASF had tried to obtain necessary licenses from Sun to support the Apache Harmony project as to call it an official Java implementation, but could not, in part due to incompatible licensing with Java's GNU General Public License and ASF's Apache License, nor could it gain access to the Java TCKs to validate the Harmony project against Sun's implementation. Though Google stated they used this code to ensure interoperability with the Java Standard Edition for other programmers, during the second appeal hearing, Google stated that it had used this code for commercial reasons to rapidly complete Android and to avoid the "drudgery" of recreating the code. ASF ceased maintaining the Apache Harmony in 2011, leading Google to take over maintenance of these libraries.

Google released a beta of the Android platform on November 5, 2007 then, one week later, the software development kit (SDK) which they noted included some Java technologies. Sun's president Schwartz congratulated Google the same day, saying they had "strapped another set of rockets to the community's momentum – and to the vision defining opportunity across our (and other) planets." During the trial, Schwartz said that at that time of Android's release, despite knowing Google may have bypassed their licensing requirements, "We decided to grit our teeth and support it so anyone supporting it would see us as part of the value chain".