With the software copyright case Google v. Oracle America, now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court after hearing oral arguments on Oct. 7, software developers and the general public may wonder about the potential impact a decision in the case may have on the tech industry. At stake for the parties are the copyright protections afforded to Oracle’s application programing interface (API) previously used by Google to provide the functionality of Google’s highly popular Android mobile operating system installed on billions of mobile devices worldwide.

The outcome may have wide-reaching implications regarding access to important tools of the trade for many software developers. Without a balanced ruling, an uncertain road could lie ahead for the software industry, with the potential to impact innovation and consumers for years to come.