A U.S. jury Google a victory on Thursday in a long-running copyright lawsuit against Oracle, saying the law allowed Google's use of Oracle's software to create its Android smartphone operating system. The jury upheld claims by Google that its use of Oracle's Java development platform was protected under the fair-use provision of copyright law.

Oracle was seeking up to $9 billion in damages. The company is expected to appeal.

The outcome is a small victory for software developers, who were alarmed by an earlier decision in the case that application programming interfaces can be protected under U.S. copyright law.

However, many related copyright lawsuits failed to materialize in the two years since that federal appeals court ruling.