One thing to note is that if Google loses, this is going back up the appeal chain and will no doubt take another whack at the Supreme Court <i>on the original issue</i>. We don&#x27;t know why the Supreme Court denied cert., but among the reasons that Oracle said that it should do so was that the appeal was interlocutory, and there is a preference in appeals courts agains such appeals -- that is, because the ruling that resulted in sending the case back to the trial court to decide the fair use issue, the decision was non-final, and, if the Supreme Court <i>were</i> to hear an appeal on the issue raised (which Oracle also argued that they shouldn&#x27;t, for other reasons), they should do so only after a final decision in the courts below.<p>Because its possible that that was the reason the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal, its certain that should Google lose at trial on the fair use issue, they&#x27;ll be back up the appeal chain not only on that issue, but also attempting to raise the copyrightability issue with the Supreme Court again. Which may be more inclined to take and decide the issue on a final decision (and, depending how long things take to get through the courts, and what happens in the political sphere, may be a substantially different court than the one that refused the case previously, anyway.)<p>Also, since the patent claims are now gone from the case, I think the inevitable (whoever wins) first appeal from the trial court will now go to the Ninth Circuit and not the Federal Circuit, and its quite possible that the Ninth Circuit will rule differently on the issue than the Federal Circuit did.