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Oracle and Google Spar Over Whether Programming Languages Can Be Copyrighted

Posted by Soulskill on from the makes-perfect-sense-minus-the-sense dept.

pcritter writes "With the Oracle v. Google trial date set for next Monday, the Judge has asked Google and Oracle to take a position on whether a programming language is copyrightable. This presumably relates to whether Google violated copyright by using a variant of the Java language and its APIs in the Android framework. Oracle, who thinks it can be, has used J.R.R. Tolkein's Elvish language as an examples (PDF) of a language that can be copyrighted. Google disagrees (PDF)."

6 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Patents Versus Copyright by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except that the title of this article clearly says "copyright" and the 20 year limit is what patents are in the states (although extensions and whatnot make that mean jack anyway). Enjoy your "one generation" graph.

    --
    My work here is dung.
  2. Re:Embrace Extend? by ppanon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thing is, while some third-party books do claim to "Teach ... Java for Android", as far as I know Google has never claimed that Dalvik is Java. Whereas for a typical embrace and extend, be it Kerberos or Java, Microsoft did claim that their extended fork was still Java, and marketed it as such. The Microsoft lawsuit was really about the use of the Java trademark (hence why Microsoft renamed their product J++), and not a copyright infringement case. So that case doesn't really apply as precedent here and it would seem that Oracle is overreaching.

    --
    Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
  3. Re:Haven't we seen this? by js_sebastian · · Score: 4, Informative

    Didn't Sun already win this case against Microsoft?

    AFAIK they won a trademark case, not a copyright case: Microsoft could not fork their own bastardization of Java and still call it Java.

  4. Re:Sure. by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, it's a specific way of licensing your creation.

  5. Re:What About Machine Language and Assembly? by msauve · · Score: 4, Informative
    A programming language is a system or method of operation, and hence specifically not copyrightable in the US. A language would be a subject for patent protection.

    In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship 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 S 102

    You can copyright a program expressed in a language, a book describing the language, a compiler or interpreter which implements the language, but not the language itself. Although, if Oracle can get a ruling that a language is copyrightable, then IBM may want to exert a copyright over SQL.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  6. Re:What About Machine Language and Assembly? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Informative

    The language is defined by (a) rules to decide whether a given source is a valid program, and (b) rules to define the behaviour of any valid program.

    For example, I could define a language by stating that a text is a valid program if it doesn't contain any 'e', and the behaviour of the program is to print the number of lines of the text.

    That's not a very useful language, but a language. Note however that the sentence above is not the language, but a description of the language. A valid program in the language would be

    bhfjdks sdfjk bvcnxbvxc nm,vc.xyn v,yxcb fjkdg ff
    gfds gfjdksl mvc,xyäa dvsqwzt z cv ödf hgfdö

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.