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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)."

1 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.

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    My work here is dung.