Google Takes the Fight With Oracle To the Supreme Court 146
whoever57 writes Google has asked the Supreme Court to review the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted. Google beat Oracle in the trial court, where a judge with a software background ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. but the Appeals court sided with Oracle, ruling that APIs can be copyrighted. Now Google is asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision.
(Also of interest.)
Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you. You are everything wrong with the software industry.
Re: Oracle (Score:1)
I shall copyright my Get() and Put() api
Re: Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean where Google comes along, does a ton of work, and for some reason doesn't think it should have to pay someone else for the work they did?
Seems completely fair to me.
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You mean where Google comes along, does a ton of work, and for some reason doesn't think it should have to pay someone else for the work they did?
Seems completely fair to me.
Uhm.. the "tons of work" Google did was to reimplement Java in a way that was compatible but hopefully not infringing..
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So what, exactly, did Google steal?
Re: Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
You're forgetting that Sun Microsystems was responsible for Java, and google went ahead on Android with Sun's blessing. Only aftrer Orcale bought them out did this animosity start.
Java was open sourced. You cannot retroactively change your mind if you become bitter that somebody built something really great with it and is being rewarded for it. That's the point of such licenses. Nobody would trust open source otherwise.
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Sun's blessing? Sun had asked 100 million from Goolge and had given legal notices to Google before it was acquired. Oh, and Google high level employees themselves were of the opinion that this is illegal. Android makes are already paying billions of dollars to MS and not a dime to Oracle.
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Well, Sun did throw a bit of a stinkbomb with the open-source Java versions, refusing to let them do the Java Compatability tests without paying, but they finally relented on that one.
Then there's the animosity Sun had towards Tomcat, too, being a better J2EE stack than Sun's.
This was all well before Oracle had bought Sun...
Re: Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you think that's fair, or legal?
Yes. The purpose of copyright is to protect creativity, not work. The "sweat of the brow" doctrine has been rejected [wikipedia.org] by the US Supreme Court. The creativity should be what lies behind the API, not the API itself. The API itself allows for NO creativity, since even the slightest deviation causes it to fail. Therefore APIs should not be copyrightable. Furthermore, there is a compelling public interest in a competitive market for software, and locked down APIs are a hindrance to that.
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LOLOL, API design creativity is second only to language design creativity. If it was so trivial "sweat of the brow" type issue, why didn't google completely design their own API instead of simply lifting it?
Implementing API can be "sweat of the brow" type work, but designing non-trivial A
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The original purpose of copyright was to *promote* creativity. The current purpose is to protect mickey mouse, 70 years after production.
Legally it is pretty obvious that an API is copyrightable. If Google had used the same ideas in the API, but expressed them differently with different function names, arguments etc. then fine. But this is an exact copy.
The law is, of course, bullshit. It is the SCOTUS job to defend the law. Fortunately we can rely on our elected representatives to improve laws as circ
Re: Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
It requires lots of ingenuity and creativity to come up with a set of api.
Sure, but someone else cannot then use different ingenuity and creativity to reimplement the API so that their API works with the same third party applications. They have no choice but to reimplement it exactly. There is precedent for these sorts of interfaces being non-copyrightable. See Lexmark vs SCC [wikipedia.org]. That was a case of Lexmark trying to copyright the handshake protocol to keep third parties from producing compatible printer cartridges. This is the same issue.
Not much different than coming up with a plot for movie with intricate relations between characters and their personalities.
This is not a valid analogy, because someone else can make a movie with a different plot, and it will still work in the same movie projectors.
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Are you stating google apps can't call Linux system APIs except through Java APIs? Java is not a system API... it's a middle layer between the apps and the system.
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Are you stating google apps can't call Linux system APIs except through Java APIs?
No, I am not saying they can't. I am saying they shouldn't have to. Interfaces should not be copyrightable, and there is legal precedent for that. Oracle is not using copyright law to protect their creativity, they are using it to lock-in customers, and suppress competition. The courts gave Lexmark a firm smackdown for doing that, and they should give Oracle a smackdown as well.
The US Constitution justifies copyright by stating that a temporary protection of creativity benefits the public by encouraging
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I believe the courts forced IBM to share APIs for their front-end processors mainframe links so that Comten products could access them.
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The US Constitution justifies copyright by stating that a temporary protection of creativity benefits the public by encouraging artists and innovators.
Did Disney ever get that memo?
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Re: Oracle (Score:1)
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" The API itself allows for NO creativity"
Have you written any complex api? I am in software industry for 28 years and in every projects that I have worked, I spend more time on api design than implementation. It requires lots of ingenuity and creativity to come up with a set of api. Not much different than coming up with a plot for movie with intricate relations between characters and their personalities.
You need to re-read what ShangaiBill wrote. I will expound on it in parens.
The creativity should be what lies behind the API (call/name), not the API (call/name) itself.
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All these things are purely functional though. Copyright doesn't protect functional aspects, you need patents for that.
Say you have two programs that work together. What you can change on each side are the creative implementation choices. What is required for them to work are the functional aspects. By "API", we specifically mean the functional parts needed for the two to work together and are specifically ignoring the implementation choices that each side can make however it wants.
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It does NOT require creativity. It requires logic. I do this for a living too, and have done so for 30 years. Two people trying to solve the same problem (developing a communications protocol, because that's what an API is) are almost always going to come up with the same solution. Even if they don't, the number of possible solutions is small, and it's NOT a creative choice picking one above the other, it's a technical choice.
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Re: Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it's copyrighted, but not patented (or patentable), you could redesign Linux or *BSD APIs that are similar in principle and operation as the POSIX APIs, but not a complete copy.
Which would have meant that porting code from UNIX to Linux/*NIX would have required shim layers. Worse, it would mean that every program that uses these APIs would be a derived work of UNIX and the UNIX license could prohibit the use of such shim layers.
Just because it affects your pet project does not make it legal.
It's not about my 'pet project', it's about the entire computing landscape. I'd actually be quite happy with a ruling in favour of Oracle: it would completely destroy a large segment of the US software industry and promote investment nearer me...
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You can't copyright words (like "tree" or "exclamation") of the English language. You also cannot copyright short phrases (because there's a good chance someone else will come up with it without copying from you). However, anything longer that took some creativity to create is certainly copyrightable.
If you imagine a single method like getID() to be similar to a word (or a short phrase) of the English language, it can't be copyrighted. But when you have hundreds or even thousands of such API declarations th
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Right, but the question is whether that copyright is enforceable against another implementation of that same API. For example, in Lexmark v. SCC, the Toner Loading Program was held to be copyrightable, but the copyright was not enforceable against SCC because SCC's use of the TLP was purely functional.
Something can be copyrightable but that copyright not enforceable if the use of the work is purely functional and used in a way where it is not practical to achieve the same result in any other way than using
Re: Oracle (Score:1)
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Does Android *have* to use Java APIs to accomplish its tasks? No. They can (and should) design their own APIs, something different from the standard Java API.
I assume you're writing about utility patents. Those are given only to unique, not-seen-before type inventions. There is
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I think that's the entire purpose of an API - allowing interoperability. The goal of interoperability has been found to be sufficient justification to allow reverse engineering of undocumented APIs; if you document your API, you're expecting folks to use it. So yeah, it's both fair and legal for them to use it. And sure, most folks expect the users of an API to treat it as a spec on how clients talk to the server, but it's equally a spec on how the server talks to the clients, and I see no reason why writin
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the issue here is that they took the api and changed the code in the background. the api itself is nothing but a bunch of method names. the code in the back is obviously patentable. the question is whether a bunch of method names are, and i would say no... but the supreme court is made of a bunch of old people who dont even know how to use phones.
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I'm trying to recall slashdot's reaction about a decade ago when the courts said that Microsoft couldn't ship their own version of the JRE with windows to run java applications.
I think it was lauded as crushing anti-competitive behavior. How is Google shipping their own custom JRE on phones they control 70% of the market for that different? I mean other than that they won't let you override the install with the Oracle version?
I agree that Oracle can die in a fire, and I will not shed a single tear, but fo
A few huge differences (Score:5, Informative)
1. The don't use the Java brand and don't call it Java.
2. Its not based on Sun/Oracle sources and relies on a clean room implementation
3. Google didn't sign a licensing contract then violate it like MS did.
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Posting AC as I have invested mod points in this discussion.
I have scanned the posts, and the biggest difference between MS's and Google's situation has not been mentioned as yet. It is that MS used the Java rip-off in products that it sold, while Google gives the stuff away gratis. This matters:
The courts need to be shown that damage has been done, and the primary test of whether significant damage has been done has always been a defensable estimate of lost income. There is no trial-tested mechanism for
Re:Oracle (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm, as I recall, Microsoft shipped something which was so completely not Java as to be laughable.
They'd taken an existing language, which was intended to be cross platform, and injected (as they usually do) their own platform-specific functions [mvps.org] ... and still tried to pass it off as Java.
But code written to use those extensions wouldn't run anywhere else. Which means Microsoft basically broke the language and the cross-platform intention.
The Microsoft/Java issue was about intentionally breaking compatibility by adding their own crap.
Now, contrast that to someone taking the exact same API interfaces, and implementing them properly for compatibility. Further, look at the fact that API interfaces from UNIX have been duplicated for literally decades in order to make something which uses the same interface and allows for code portability. The interface is what you publish to allow others to use it.
So, if you want consistency, you have to remember these are actually two different issues.
Microsoft didn't adhere to the published interfaces, and just decided to add their own. That was Sun's lawyers.
Now, Oracle is saying "you can't copy our API interface because it's super secret and copyrighted". This is Oracle's lawyers.
Google is saying "you're idiots, this is how programming has worked for decades".
So, we agree you should be able to adhere to the API interface for compatibility sake. We also don't think you should be doing what Microsoft did, and do their usual "embrace/extend/extinguish" crap.
And when they got told they weren't allowed to embrace and extend, they dropped it altogether and came out with .NET.
Oracle is actually making a different argument than Sun was at the time.
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Oracle is actually making a different argument than Sun was at the time.
Sorta. It is basically 'we control java and no one else'. It is the same argument again. They do not want anyone adding to the language but the gatekeepers.
The jvm from ms *WAS* the better one out there. No one I knew installed the sun one if they could help it. It was orders of magnitude slower.
MS put java on every desktop out there by default. Then Sun did not like that they lost control. The java language suffered heavily for
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Sorta. It is basically 'we control java and no one else'. It is the same argument again
No, it is not. It is a different argument about the same assertion.
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2)
Trollmod for a perfectly cromulent explanation.
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Sorta. It is basically 'we control java and no one else'. It is the same argument again. They do not want anyone adding to the language but the gatekeepers.
That had nothing to do with the technology, just the Java(tm) trademark. Google didn't do anything that used the Java(tm) trademark.
If Oracle wins, Bell Labs owns the world. (Score:5, Interesting)
The full source code of the UNIX v6 kernel, as published in the Lions commentary [lemis.com], bore prominent copyright notices from AT&T Bell Labs.
If the system call and C library API interface is thus still owned by Bell Labs, then that covers Oracle Linux, the POSIX standard, commercial UNIX, as well as all the phones (including QNX), routers, UNIX/Linux/BSD servers/workstations, and likely much more.
Oracle had better pray that they lose.
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Also, doesn't AMD's reimplementation of the 386 microcode count as prior art? Intel sued them and AMD won IIRC.
They created a new, compatible microcode for the processor using clean room reverse engineering.
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By prior art I mean existing case law.
Re:If Oracle wins, Bell Labs owns the world. (Score:5, Interesting)
The AT&T copyrights were the genesis of POSIX. Nobody could create a workalike Un*x, so POSIX was originally a "clean room" reimplementation of the Un*x API's [libc, programs, et. al.]. POSIX now serves as a standard, but that wasn't its original purpose.
Because the POSIX methodology has been around for 30 years, it provides some precedent/defense for Google [estoppel].
If Oracle's argument prevails, this kills all Linux, *BSD [OSX] workalike OSes. Also, because ISO copyrights the C/C++ specs [to charge a fee to have a copy], this means that nobody could program in C/C++ without a license from ISO.
The Oracle/Google decision by the appellate court is tantamount to conferring patent protections for a copyright. That is, because Louis L'Amour copyrighted his western novels, nobody else can pen a western.
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The Oracle/Google decision by the appellate court is tantamount to conferring patent protections for a copyright. That is, because Louis L'Amour copyrighted his western novels, nobody else can pen a western.
That is a fantastically easy to understand analogy! Somebody needs to mod you up.
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Yes, there is something different. Google never told that what you called their "JRE" is a replacement for the oracle one, or should even be considered like this. It's there for a completely different purpose.
While MS claimed that their JRE was a replacement for Oracle one and did break compatibility all the way.
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You're talking about Visual J or whatever, and it was a big thing because they customized it and made it so it was no longer standard Java. Write code for Visual J and often it wouldn't work for regular Java. There were a bunch of windows-only extensions and stuff too.
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No, I'm not talking about J#, which was a separate mistake whose cancellation lead to C# instead(which was much better).
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Visual J++: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]
First paragraph starts with:
"While J++ conformed to the Java language specification, Microsoft did not implement certain features of the official Sun Java implementation in its Visual J++ product line. Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI) and Java Native Interface (JNI) are such examples.[2][3]
In addition, J++ implemented other extensions that were not part of Sun's Java implementation. The inclusion of callbacks and delegates for event handling further contribute
Re:Oracle (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody ever said that Microsoft could not ship their own version of the JRE, and Microsoft newer made their own JRE.
Microsoft distributed a modified version of suns jre, based on source code licensed from Sun. And it was sourcecode licerse, which gave Microsoft problems. If they had just made their own jre, anything would have been fine(Except for the fact that they might not have called it Java(tm)
Re:Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft lost because they had a contract with Sun which said they wouldn't modify the Java Runtime to be incompatible with the standard. They did exactly that. Sun was pretty much guaranteed a win because they had a contract with MS.
Would Sun win if MS had never signed a contract and done a clean room implementation of Java and not called it Java? That I suppose would depend on whether API's are copyrightable which is what Google is asking the court to review.
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For one 70% is nowhere near the market dominance that 96% is. Android is hardly the only game in town on phones and android, unlike windows, is an open platform.
But that is hardly the important issue here. If API's become copyrightable that impacts almost every piece of software... on every platform. You don't have to file to have a copyright
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How is Google shipping their own custom JRE on phones they control 70% of the market for that different?
Android phones don't run Java, and don't come with a JRE.
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Well, actually, the issue was never whether or not Microsoft could ship it's own version of the JRE. The issue was rather that Microsoft had extended the Java API with it's own functions. Developers had started to use those functions, making applications written for the Microsoft JRE not backward compatible to Sun's JRE, and was thus subverting the standard.
Sun used the court to assert it's ownership over the standard, and the court ruled that Microsoft could not extend the standard. Microsoft, finding i
Re: Oracle (Score:2)
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The action against Microsoft was based on anti-competitive acts, founded on the assumption (validated by the court) that Microsoft is a monopoly.
This action is based on strict copyright. Oracle is not alleging that Google are trying to harm Java, just that they didn't have the right to do what they did.
Shachar
Re:Oracle (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying to recall slashdot's reaction about a decade ago when the courts said that Microsoft couldn't ship their own version of the JRE with windows to run java applications.
I think it was lauded as crushing anti-competitive behavior. How is Google shipping their own custom JRE on phones they control 70% of the market for that different? I mean other than that they won't let you override the install with the Oracle version?
I agree that Oracle can die in a fire, and I will not shed a single tear, but for consistency's sake, is there something different here?
Yea, it's amazing how the public sides with the company that isn't trying to screw them at every turn.
Google is generally nice to us...
Microsoft and Oracle are about the biggest Jerks in tech...
Funny how that works, eh?
A similar situation:
I hate you because you slept with my wife, and you snag a beer our of my fridge? My reaction would be?
You just gave me a ride home after my car broken down, and you snag a beer our of the fridge. My reaction again?
Is that a double standard?
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I'm trying to recall slashdot's reaction about a decade ago when the courts said that Microsoft couldn't ship their own version of the JRE with windows to run java applications.
No such thing ever happened, but there was a something similar. You're probably thinking of the 1997 Sun vs. Microsoft case over MSJVM. In that case it was demonstrated that Microsoft deliberately made an incompatible implementation of Java so that Java programs wouldn't run properly for Windows users unless the programs were designed specifically for Microsoft's Java, and that programs designed for Microsoft's Java wouldn't work on non-Microsoft implementations, in order to destroy any cross-platform benef
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Mod parent up!
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I'm hoestly hoping to get something like "+3, Flamebait" :P
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and when sites use their own API's to access youtube outside the official API, google cries foul and starts sending C&D letters
Mute your sound (Score:1)
Offensively loud bushwhack ad on that site.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Oracle wouldn't even exist today... (Score:1)
If Oracle has their way, then IBM should be able to sue them out of existence since their entire business was based on copying IBM's database source code and APIs to make the Oracle Database.
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If SC decides APIs are copyright-able then IBM should be able to sue them...and they should do it.
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Re: Oracle wouldn't even exist today... (Score:2)
Didn't IBM intimidate a would-be litigant out of suing by threatening to sue them on the same claims once before? IBM is like the big brother asterisk from the Pink Panther cartoon "Pink Punch"...
Oracle trying to undo the GPL decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Oracle are clearly trying to pull Java back from public domain and back to within Oracles control to undo the GPL license Java is under. It's a clever lawyer trick, but Java itself uses copyrighted APIs.
Java was not the first to use Vector, or String classes or Views or any other API and classes it built on. It would be difficult to even identify which *names* of classes are actually new APIs and which are copied from others.
In Oracle's mind, it thinks if it can get away with this is can seize Android, which contains a Java compatible API named set, even though it doesn't use Java and the code is not theirs. But that API set is itself copied from many previous products.
Why do we have trademarks if you can copyright the name of something? (Which is what an API is, its the names of the methods).
Re:Oracle trying to undo the GPL decision (Score:4, Informative)
It's a clever lawyer trick, but Java itself uses copyrighted APIs.
I think you mean Java itself uses pre-existing APIs. As far as I know, no API has ever been copyright, and Oracle's claim is an attempt to ram through a breathtaking expansion in the scope of copyright for software.
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As of -whenever it was- no copyright attribution needs to be asserted in order to apply. As long as the classes, or their structure were leveraged from others' works. Take 'Pair', 'Triple' as an example. In Java, there's no Pair, but many people like to associate two entities together in a free-form way. To do this, you:
Make a constructor with optionally 2,1,0 arguments
Setter for the first item (optional)
Getter for the first item
Setter for the second item (optional)
Getter for the second item
That API will be
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Oracle gave a free license for J2SE, whereas Android and mobile devices use J2ME (which costs $$$ and is the money-maker side of Java - Oracle gives squat about J2SE or J2EE because they aren't profit centers).
And it's really a patent license - that as long as your implementation is J2SE compatible, you're good.
Of course, if it's really about whether APIs can be copyrighted, this can have far-reach decisions, because it places a bunch of GPL'd stuff on t
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Oracle gave a free license for J2SE, whereas Android and mobile devices use J2ME (which costs $$$ and is the money-maker side of Java - Oracle gives squat about J2SE or J2EE because they aren't profit centers).
Android and mobiles devices use Dalvik. The only thing that is Java related is the syntax which goes into the compiler, the stuff that comes out the other side of the compilation process is not Java bytecode and is not compatible with the Java runtime.
And it's really a patent license - that as long as your implementation is J2SE compatible, you're good.
You cannot file a patent for the single line of code "int printf(const char *, ...);", the API is literally a statement of a problem in the absence of the solution. The solution is the implementation of the code inside the functions which is the only part that
if an API is a list of facts.... (Score:1)
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I assume you're intending this as a joke. Feist v. Rural Telephone Service established that one cannot copyright a complete list of facts.
Not as trivial as it sounds (Score:1)
IIRC Sun Microsystems got into similar legal battles with Microsoft over the latter's implementation of a Java Virtual Machine. Sun claimed it licensed use of the *Sun* JDK and JVM to Microsoft, not the rights to re-implement the language with its own engine.
Of course, Microsoft eventually responded by creating a competing set of virtual machine-based languages that were sufficiently different from Java as to not violate copyright.
Now, that might have been a licensing issue, but the copyright issue is inte
Lotus v. Borland (Score:3)
There were the famous battles of spreadsheet "Look and Feel" where Borland Quattro Pro emulated the Lotus 1-2-3 menu hierarchy; Lotus successfully sued for damages.
How successful was Lotus actually? The Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled in favor of Borland, and the Supremes agreed [wikipedia.org].
17 USC 102(b) (Score:4, Interesting)
Can someone explain how it's not a slam-dunk argument that APIs fall under the scope limitation of 17 USC 102(b)? Isn't that a key underpinning of decades of case law on very nearly this exact subject (Computer Associates v. Altai, Lotus v. Borland, Sega v. Accolade, Sony v. Connectix)?
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Nice subtle moving of the goalposts there...
An API is not the same thing as API code. API code is an implementation of an API, and not the API itself, even if you describe the API by using a programming language notation as if you were writing code.
Code is obviously copyrightable, regardless if it forms part of an API or not... But the API itself is only the interface, and does not actually contain any code, and such an interfac
Let us consult the Constitution (Score:3, Insightful)
"The Congress shall have power ... TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries..." [Caps mine]
This fails the promoting progress requirement.
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THE PROGRESS of science and useful arts
This fails the promoting progress requirement.
Not, if you measure "the progress" by the revenue/profit.
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The Congress shall have power ... TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS of science and useful arts
With this Congress, it should read "TO PROMOTE THE REGRESSION of science and useful arts based on fear, ignorance and stupidity."
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I am not a English Major but the meaning is conveyed as :
TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS .....by securing ....the exclusive right
This is intention of creating copyright and patents in the first place, I am afraid, and not to allow free copying and reuse.
SCOTUS defers to Congress on "promote" (Score:2)
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Nice write-up here http://www.heritage.org/consti... [heritage.org] demonstrates that both the Courts and Congress have capitulated.
API == interface: electrical, mechanical, biochem (Score:2)
The concept of APIs can also be extended to any "interfacing" whether software, electrical, mechanical or perhaps even biochemical (proteins etc?) or "human communication protocols".
Where do we go from here?
Feel sorry for the lawyers on both sides (Score:3)
They will have to use sock puppets and crayons to argue this case with these judges.
Predictions are hard (Score:5, Funny)
It's hard to decide how the SCUSA would rule in this case because it is two big corporations fighting. If it were a corporation versus a human being then it would be an easy decision for the SCUSA, but I don't think five of those nine Justices have any compass for how to rule in cases between two corporations.
It'll be really confusing for them. Imagine the conversation:
Roberts: "Hey, Thomas, how are you going to vote?" ... ... ... ...
Thomas: "I don't know, Johnny. I read the briefs and shat my pants when I saw that both litigants were corporations."
Scalia: "Me too. I even asked both sides if maybe they were not a corporation, to simplify things, but it seems like they really are both corporations."
Roberts: "Yeah I'm flummoxed. There's just no way to decide."
Alito: "Maybe one of them is a small corporation? Then we could just round them down to 'human' and rule against them."
Roberts: "No such luck. These are both huge corporations."
Kennedy: "Hey, guys, I'm thinking maybe we could decide the case based on legal principles."
Roberts:
Scalia:
Alito: "I don't get it. Legal principles? You mean like, we should check the documents of incorporation to see whether they are real corporations?"
Kennedy: "No, I mean like, we should decide the case based on what the law says, and based on previous legal decisions in American courts."
Roberts:
Scalia:
Alito: "I still don't get it. What does the law have to do with it?"
Thomas: "Yeah, seriously Kennedy, we let you screw up the DOMA decision and we're not going to let you do it again. Is this 'API' thing religious? Maybe we could rule in favor of religion, if the other corporation is atheist."
Alito: "No, apparently it's some kind of computery thing. I don't really know, I was doing a Sudoku during arguments."
Roberts: "Look, maybe we should just defer to the appellate court."
Scalia: "But the appellate court ruled against a corporation!"
Roberts: "Yeah but they also ruled for a corporation."
Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito: heads physically explode.
Kennedy: "Ah, sheesh, they got blood on my robe."
Ginsberg: "Anthony, come over here, maybe you can help Sonya and I write a decision."
Kennedy: "I guess so, but your lap isn't as comfortable as Scalia's. Will you scratch me behind my ear?"
Ginsberg: "I'll scratch you behind your ear but you have to promise to stop mentioning legal principles in front of the conservatives."
Microsofts Android Tax .. (Score:2)
M-Cam casts doubts on Microsoft's Android patent portfolio [zdnet.com]
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It wont have any impact on that since this case is about copyrights and not patents.
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Copyrighting APIs makes no techinical sense, while copyrighting maps and manuals does.
The only thing remotely plausible is patenting APIs. And even that I'm not sure technically feasible.
I've witnessed probably man/centuries of wasted efforts due to crappy APIs - and I've seen single-person projects springing to life and seamingly leveling mountains when the available APIs were good.
Some APIs fit the puzzle of any applications - some force projects as a whole back to the drawing board.
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> I've witnessed probably man/centuries of wasted efforts due to crappy APIs -
> and I've seen single-person projects springing to life and seamingly leveling mountains when the available APIs were good.
> Some APIs fit the puzzle of any applications - some force projects as a whole back to the drawing board.
So you're saying there are good APIs and bad APIs, that there is an art to writing a concise, balanced, beautiful API?
I want Google to win this one, but copyright _is_ supposed to cover stuff you
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There is definitely a value (art) in good API. However...then there should be a similar balance as in patent intentions (no, not US implementation of patents) ie keep balance of reward/incentive to innovate with general society benefit.
If API was found to be copyright-able everybody would stay away of everybody's else APIs unless given to public domain. This at least would make clear statement of what to do - do not use copyrighted APIs. However this defeats the purpose of APIs: cooperation.
I at least hope
unless cooperation invited (Score:2)
Again, I'm expressing arguments against the outcome I prefer.
If, as you argue, the purpose for creating your API is to facilitate cooperation, would you not license it to allow cooperation?
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I have no problem with the idea of an API being copyrighted. But please note, "we needed to do it for interoperability" has been found to be a fair use justification for reverse engineering undocumented APIs; if you actually publish it, you're doing it to encourage interoperability and writing to the API is fair use.
The term is stupidly long (Score:2)
> If the cost of making something is so low that a >100 year monopoly isn't needed for its production, then either the copyright term must be diminished or the product should not be covered by copyright.
The term of copyright is ridiculously long. I would think that anyone who thinks copyright is a good idea should support reducing the length considerably. Having it so long encourages and provides good arguments for those who wish to greatly restrict copyright. A term of around seven years would accomp
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You can't copyright a single telephone number, but you can copyright a telephone book.
Actually, you cannot copyright a telephone book [wikipedia.org].
Re:You can copyright maps and manuals (Score:5, Informative)
Patent/IP Attorney chiming in.
Sure. You're very specific expression of both. You don't get to copyright the "facts" in either case. Everyone is free to copy the factual aspects of both maps and manuals. The distinction is an important one. And while not addressing maps and manuals directly in their petition [amlaw.com], Google takes on the concept: you can write a book about art, but you don't get to stop other people from doing that art.
You can draw (and potentially get a copyright for) an outline of the world, but you can't stop other people from doing the same.
Google's argument about the API isn't all that much different: you can copyright an implementation of the API, but you don't get a copyright for the "facts" of the API: function names, arrangement, etc. The argument is that copyright, by statute, expressly does not extend to "extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." (17 USC 102(b)). This is not a trivial argument. It's also pretty important because if Oracle/Federal Circuit are correct, then you can have de facto patent protection for a century without any of the procedural protections such as examination.
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This is precisely what copyright does *NOT* cover. There must be millions of equally good ways of doing the same thing, and you may protect the non-functional aspects of the one way that you creatively chose. Here, the name is purely functional -- play(soundname) is the only way to get the API to play a sound -- it is the one way to achieve a particular functional result, so it cannot be protected by copyright.
You can copyright a sentence you solely authored if it has sufficient creative expression. But you