A small victory for Google, despite being found guilty for infringing on Oracle’s Java API copyrights, as U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Oracle won’t get the $1 billion in damages it seeks from Google because the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous decision on whether or not Android’s use of Java is protected under “fair use.”

The San Francisco jury, in deliberation since last Thursday, found that Google did in fact  infringe Oracle’s copyrights for programming tools and nine lines of code.  And for those nine lines, Oracle’s damages amount to no more than $150,000.  “There has been zero finding of liability on copyright, the issue of fair use is still in play,” Alsup said.  The patent phase of the court case will begin today, and the matter of damages will be taken up by the jury in the final phase of the eight-week trial.

But that’s not the end of the story for the high-stakes court case and copyrightable APIs.  Though the jury was asked to make a decision on Oracle’s allegations of infringement on Google’s part, the ultimate word will be made by Alsup later in the case.  Alsup has instructed the jury to assume APIs are indeed copyrightable–he can decide later whether they are or aren’t.

It will also be left to Alsup to rule on Oracle’s request for a judgement in its favor that Google infringed Java copyrights, and that it wasn’t fair use.  A ruling for Oracle could set aside the jury’s decision all together.

”We appreciate the jury’s efforts, and know that fair use and infringement are two sides of the same coin,” Google spokesman Jim Prosser tells the San Francisco Gate. “The core issue is whether the APIs here are copyrightable, and that’s for the court to decide. We expect to prevail on this issue and Oracle’s other claims.”