The justices issued orders today from last week’s private conference. They did not add any new cases to their merits docket for next term.
The justices asked the U.S. solicitor general to weigh in on a dispute between computer technology giants Google and Oracle that one publication has called the “copyright lawsuit of the decade.” Google had asked the Supreme Court to review two questions: Whether copyright protection extends to software interfaces and whether Google’s use of a software interface in the context of creating a new computer program constitutes “fair use,” which does not infringe a copyright. There is no deadline for the solicitor general to file his brief.
The Supreme Court did not act on two high-profile petitions that they considered at last week’s conference: Box v. Planned Parenthood, a challenge to the constitutionality of an Indiana law that bars abortions based on (among other things) the sex or disability of the fetus and requires fetal remains to be buried or cremated, and Klein v. Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, filed by an Oregon couple who declined on religious grounds to make a custom cake for a same-sex wedding.
The justices’ next conference is Thursday, May 9. We expect orders from that conference to be released on Monday, May 13, at 9:30 a.m.
This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.
[Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the petitioner in Google LLC v. Oracle America Inc. However, I am not affiliated with the firm.]
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