In July, the Supreme Court of the United States granted Google a two-month extension of its four-month deadline to file a petition for writ of certiorari (i.e., Supreme Court review of the Federal Circuit's copyrightability finding in Oracle's favor). The deadline was extended from August 7 to October 6, and on that day, Google filed its petition. Originally, Oracle's response would have been due a month later, on November 7. The Supreme Court website now indicates an "[o]rder extending time to file response to petition to and including December 8, 2014." This means Oracle got an additional month.
Since Google has, after its defeat in the appeals court, apparently modified its strategy (regrettably to the effect that it is now trying to raise the standard for software copyrightability as a whole to an unreasonable and unmanageable level as opposed to just arguing that API-related code is subject to special rules), I'm not surprised that Oracle's lawyers, who are (just like Google's) very busy, wanted a bit more time so they can respond carefully.
It could also be that Oracle will have to respond to some amicus curiae briefs in support of Google's petition. On my Twitter feed I can see that key players in the Google-aligned camp are still unhappy about the Federal Circuit ruling, but they don't appear to be excited about Google's petition either. I don't have the kind of access to filings with the Supreme Court that I have in connection with district court and Federal Circuit cases, so it may take time to find out about that.
A few days ago I published a blog post on the (eight) most widespread misconceptions surrounding this case.
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