Google v. Oracle had been a closely watched case by the tech industry, as a ruling favoring Oracle could have had significant effects on past and future software development, given the prolific use of APIs.[84] Opponents of the federal court's ruling, including Google and other developers of Android-based software, had raised several concerns including the impact on interoperability, software innovation and the potential for bad actors to pick up the rights to old software and file claims against companies who built their software on what were assumed to be open standards. If this ruling was allowed to stand, it was believed that companies will be forced to implement deliberately incompatible standards to protect themselves from the risk of complex litigation, moving away from the current trends in software development which have focused on improving interoperability between different services allowing apps to communicate with one another, creating more integrated platforms for end users.[65][13]
Industry and legal experts had stated an Oracle victory could have created a chilling effect in software development, with copyright holders using the copyright on APIs to prevent their use in developing interoperable alternatives through reverse engineering, as common in open source software development.[85][86][87] At the same time, experts cautioned that a judgement favoring Google's position may weaken protection for copyright for software code developers, allowing competitors with better resources to develop improved products from smaller firms, and reduce the motive for innovation within the industry.[88][89]
One example identified by Wired is the Linux operating system. While Linux is fully open source, it is based on POSIX, a set of APIs that mimic those of the commercial Unix operating system that enable high levels of interoperability for developers; a programmer would only need to write one set of code which then can compile on any system that has the same API, even if the computing architecture of the systems are different. If case law favored Oracle, the current owners of Unix, Micro Focus, could have sought damages from any POSIX-based operating system developer intending to use the operating system for commercial use.[90]