Professor Mark Lemley spoke with Cy Musiker of KQED News on the importance of the fair use finding in the Oracle v. Google case.

A federal judge in San Francisco has called on two Silicon Valley heavyweights to file motions this week on whether to declare a mistrial in their billion-dollar court battle.

Yesterday a federal jury found that in developing its Android smart phone software, Google borrowed too freely from copyrighted material belonging to Oracle. But the jury deadlocked on whether that infringement is okay under what's called "fair use."

"The big questionmark," said Mark Lemley, a professor at Stanford Law School, "And the thing I think that could derail the process, is the jury's failure to come to a verdict on the fair use finding."