The long-running legal dispute between Oracle and Google took another turn last week, when a US judge overruled a decision that Oracle’s Java API code was not protected by copyright.

According to specialist website FOSS Patents, because the original jury was hung with regard to the defence of “fair use”, the case will now be remanded to the US District Court for Northern California for a new trial concerning fair use and damages.

Financial Times said that this “is set to revive Oracle’s claim for damages of as much as $1 billion and will introduce new uncertainty for Google’s Android operating system”.

The case concerns the use of Oracle’s technology in the Android platform, which is heavily reliant on Java.

In order to enable Java developers to write code for Android, it was stated that Google had copied code from 37 API packages verbatim, including the structure, sequence and organisation – although it also wrote its own implementing code in most cases.

FOSS Patents notes that the current ruling makes a clear split between the Java programming language and the API packages, noting that Google could have used the language to create its own APIs, but opted not to do so.

“Because we conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organisation of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection, we reverse the district court’s copyrightability determination with instructions to reinstate the jury’s infringement finding as to the 37 Java packages,” the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit wrote.

Unsurprisingly, the ruling had a mixed response within the technology industry.

Supporters said that it has provided certainty that copyright can be used to protect innovation, while opponents said that it has created uncertainty as to how developers can write interoperable software using APIs which do not infringe copyright.

The original decision dates back to mid-2012, with the complaint filed several years before that.