The US Supreme Court has ruled that Google’s use of Oracle software to build an android operating system did not break copyright law.

The decision overturned a previous court ruling that claimed the company’s use of Oracle software code violated the legislation.

The court ruled six to two in favour of the tech giant.

Justice Stephen Breyer said that to allow enforcement of Oracle’s copyright would “risk harm to the public.”

“Given the costs and difficulties of producing alternative APIs with similar appeal to programmers, allowing enforcement here would make of the Sun Java API’s declaring code a lock limiting the future creativity of new programs,” explained Breyer. “Oracle alone would hold the key.”

To enable millions of programmers familiar with the Java programming language to work with its new Android platform, Google copied around 11,500 lines of code from Oracle’s Java SE program.

Oracle first accused Google of plagiarising its software by copying this coding for Android back in 2010.

Android reportedly now makes up 70 per cent of mobile devices across the world.

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