Ninth Circuit rules in Oracle v. Rimini that Rimini violated copyright law but says automated downloads don't break California, Nevada laws, even if against ToS
Bill Donahue / Law360 :
Context & Ripple Effects
Oracle's fight with Rimini Street has been running since the vendor won a $50M damages award in 2015 over Rimini's handling of Oracle support materials. This Ninth Circuit decision settles the appeal on split terms: the copyright infringement stands, but the panel refuses to stretch California and Nevada statutes to cover downloads that breach a license's terms of service.
The ruling lands mid-arc in Oracle's broader copyright campaign — the same company that fought Google over Java APIs through the jury fair-use verdict and its aftermath — and it draws a sharper line than Oracle wanted between what copyright law punishes and what only a contract does.
First-order effects
- Rimini's liability on the copyright claim is affirmed, locking in the damages track Oracle opened in 2015, while Oracle loses the state-law theories it hoped would widen the case beyond copying.
Second-order effects
- Third-party enterprise-software support firms get cover to automate downloading of licensed patches and updates where their only breach is contractual — pushing vendors like Oracle to enforce restrictions through license agreements and DMCA claims rather than state computer-crime statutes.
Third-order effects
- Together with the appellate court's later rejection of Apple's claims against Corellium's iOS simulator, the decision marks courts consistently narrowing copyright's reach to actual copying rather than contract violations — a structural boundary for how software owners police use of their products.
The trend: Courts are separating copyright infringement from terms-of-service breaches, forcing software vendors to defend their licensing models through contracts rather than state law.