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Oracle vs Google: Copyright Claims Must Remain
swandives writes "More in the Oracle/Google patent infringement saga. Oracle says no court has ever found that APIs for software like Java are ineligible for copyright protection. The claims were made in its objection to Google's request that the court make a summary judgment on Oracle's copyright allegations. In early August, Google asked the judge to rule that Google doesn't infringe Oracle copyright in its implementation of Android. In an objection to that request, Oracle asked the judge to let the charge go to trial. Earlier, Judge Alsup denied Google's attempt to get a potentially damaging e-mail redacted. Looks like this one could take a while."
Why the hell should an API, the computer equivalent of a phone number, qualify for copyright protection?
Implementation behind those, yes. The actual API itself? Well, I guess it's a great end-run against 3rd party reimplementations...
If APIs are found to be protected under copyright, won't this mean something like Mono C# violates copyright as well?
And what about a DirectX emulator for Linux for example?
This doesn't sound right. These 3rd party APIs are, to me at least, the software equivalent of reverse engineering. Figuring out how the original works by providing emulation. This should be protected behavior or else it will be easier for companies to inadvertently gain new monopolies...
FUD.
Microsoft's problem was that they contaminated the API with proprietary extensions and still claimed it to be JAVA Standard compatible. Nothing more, nothing less.
Google gone another way. They re-implemented the whole thing (see Dalvik).
Oracle is pursuing a new way of litigating probably because Motorola's acquisition by Google armed them with a fearsome portfolio of patents - almost a insurance of mutual destruction.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Google did to Java on Phones exactly what we criticized Microsoft for through all those years of Slashdot existence.
Not exactly: -
First, Google made the code open source.
Second, Google never proclaimed JavaVM compatibility.
That's a far cry from Microsoft's behaviors.
They took the API, they partially implemented them, then made their own incompatibilities, then took over the market with their incompatible implementation.
While I agree with this, it is not illegal. After all, everything was open source according to SUN.
Next please.
It's slightly different. Google didn't market it as Google Java, and in fact took pains to say that "the syntax looks like Java but it is compiled to run on the Dalvik VM".
Oracle have asked the court to rule that the copyright claim should remain.
It's a standard reply brief, nothing to see here until the court make a ruling.
Do No Evil? I don't think so.
FYI: Google's moto is "Don't be evil" not "Do no evil".
FYI: Google's moto is "Don't be evil" not "Do no evil".
Actually Google's "moto" is "rola"...
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
If a court rules that a company can own an API, then everybody's software becomes infringing!
This isn't a new concern. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I worked (as a "consultant") on a number of projects at Digital. One of the discussions that came up occasionally was why DEC's unix systems were all based on BSD, and not Sys/V. It was well-known that DEC had Sys/V running on their hardware internally, but for some reason they didn't want to sell it.
The explanation that came up every time was that the Digital lawyers had nixed the use of Sys/V and other AT&T code for the same reason that we're discussing now: The run-time libraries all contained AT&T copyright notices in every routine, so if you linked to those libraries, your binaries would contain AT&T copyright notices. This included libc, so pretty much all binaries produced on Sys/V contained lots of AT&T copyright notices. There was a very good chance that AT&T would have a legal claim on any software that contained those copyright notices.
The lawyers apparently did point out that the status of these copyright claims in binaries was a legal "gray area" that had never been properly tested in the courts. Their professional legal advice was to let someone else be the sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hguinea pig who paid the legal fees to fight AT&T on the issue. Until that was decided, using AT&T binary libraries was legally too risky, and since the BSD libraries were not such a legal threat, DEC should stick with BSD, which did the job just fine.
Disclaimer: I never personally talked to any of these purported DEC lawyers to verify this story. But it was widely believed by all the DEC insiders that I talked to. I'd imagine that the same sort of discussions must be going on inside a lot of current companies with respect to java. I'd also guess that a lot of companies lawyers are advising that their clients minimize the use of java until the courts sort out the legal issues, just to be on the safe side. Why risk your company's profits on a language that may be legally incumbered in ways that are unknowable today, when there are similar languages (python, perl, etc.) that the geeks say are just as good and are legally safe to use..
(Yeah, I know I'm risking a language flame war by that last comment. Hopefully the mods here will mark them OT. ;-)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.