the Zealous

On November 15, 2019, the US Supreme Court granted certiorari in (ie, agreed to hear the final appeal of) Oracle v. Google, with dramatic global  implications for interoperability, innovation, and competition. The culmination of nine years of furiously fought litigation between two technology titans, this case concerns nothing less than the scope of copyright protection for software and the freedom to interoperate.

In 2007, Google developed the Android smartphone operating system to be compatible with the Java platform by copying the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) originally developed by Sun Microsystems, the company that invented Java. By leveraging the existing massive Java developer base, Google’s actions made it easy for Java developers to write applications for Android. 

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Paul Farrell, Jr. was looking through the West Virginia Code a few years ago when he came across a statute saying a county has the legal right to abate a “public nuisance.” Typically, that would mean things like trash heaps in someone’s front yard.

But Farrell decided it might also describe prescription opioids.

Farrell is a small-city lawyer in a place often described as the epicenter of the opioid crisis. His hometown has been flooded by pills — “a tsunami,” he says. A thousand people have died of drug overdoses here in less than two decades.

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