The presentations of evidence in the Oracle v. Google copyright case wrapped up on Friday, and only a few hours of closing arguments now stand between the jury and their deliberations.

The beginning of the week was dominated by Google's defense case, with more star witnesses, including two former CEOs of Sun Microsystems: Eric Schmidt, who later became CEO of Google, and Jonathan Schwartz. Schwartz testified that he never considered suing Google over Android, "because we didn't feel we had any grounds."

On Friday, Oracle's president and CFO, Safra Catz, testified today about how she and her colleagues at Oracle approached and tried to get the company to pay for a license to Java. But Google responded forcefully, insisting that it had only used open-source material properly, and didn't violate any Oracle IP rights.

Near the end of those negotiations, Google engineer Alan Eustace wrote to Catz, rejecting her company's demands that Google pay up for Android. That e-mail, which was shown to the jury, reads as follows:

Safra, I have discussed your proposals with Google engineers, lawywers, founders, and executives, and they are not acceptable. We will not pay for code that we are not using, or license IP that we strongly believe we are not violating, and that you refuse to enumerate. Google engineers spent considerable time and effort building from scratch open source alternatives to closed systems. This effort is one that we believe is important to Google and our partners. Google and Oracle have a great opportunity to work together to make Java the preferred choice for mobile, client, and server computing. Your customers are begging for mobile solutions, and your enterprise business will depend on delivering them. We want to be your partner, but this discussion seems to be going in the wrong direction. Alan

Aside from a nine-line function that's been deleted from Android, Oracle acknowledges that Google didn't copy any code from Java. Oracle says that by copying the "structure, sequence and organization" of 37 Java APIs, Google has violated copyright law. That phrase—"structure, sequence and organization"—came up so frequently when the lawyers were arguing over jury instructions today that both sides started to refer to the concept by an acronym, "SSO."

The overall case also involves accusations of patent infringement, but those will be dealt with in the second phase of the case. For now, the jury is just getting ready to decide the copyright claims over Java APIs. The trial, now two weeks old, may last as long as eight weeks.

What the jury won't know

Friday was a long day in court. After the final testimony from Catz and experts in the morning, lawyers argued all afternoon about what the jury's final instructions will look like.

There is one thing the jury won't know: the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted at all is actually up in the air. It's a legal gray area that will be decided by Judge William Alsup—but only after the jury gives its verdict in this case. (When that happens, even a jury verdict in Oracle's favor could be a hollow one.) During debates over the jury instructions today, Alsup deleted a notation about how he'll decide the "copyrightability" issue. Instead, the instructions will simply tell the jury to assume that Java APIs—which are like sets of instructions for how a programming language can be used—can indeed be copyrighted. Since that order emphasizes the importance of the APIs, it probably weighs in Oracle's favor.