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EU Court Rules APIs, Programming Languages Not Copyrightable

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-code dept.

itwbennett writes "The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that the functionality of a computer program and the programming language it is written in cannot be protected by copyright. In its ruling on a case brought by SAS Institute against World Programming Limited (WPL), the court said that 'the purchaser of a license for a program is entitled, as a rule, to observe, study or test its functioning so as to determine the ideas and principles which underlie that program.'"

4 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Read the decision by msobkow · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read what the decision actually says. The source code and object code which implement a system are covered by copyright, but the interfaces and algorithms implemented by that source code are not.

    It's a fine distinction, but it essentially says that if you can reverse engineer the requirements of an API by observing it's behaviour, you are free to re-implement that functionality. i.e. You have to use so-called "clean-room" techniques, where the team that did the functional analysis of the APIs to write the specs have absolutely nothing else to do with the team that writes the implementation.

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    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  2. This is no news ... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 5, Informative

    European court rules ....
    Sorry, this is law
    A court is not "ruling" what is "law".
    In europe we have laws that define what is "the case" what is "right" or what is "wrong" ...
    I don't know the background, but going to court and asking for a rule if APIs are copyrightable is so plain stupid it is beyond believe. The law explicitly states: APIs or SQL data definition statements are ... surprise surprise: not copyrightable

    Seems half of the world does not understand how a court works. There is a law. There is a subject. And the judge decides if the subject is afflicted by the law.

    Pretty simple.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  3. Re:It's now a free for all for all file fomats! Ye by White+Flame · · Score: 5, Informative

    but the DMCA in the US forbids "reverse engineering"

    No, it does not. The DMCA prohibits "Circumvention of Technological Protection Measures", specifically circumvention of measures to access copyrighted materials, and circumvention of measures to copy copyrighted materials. It prohibits the act of circumvention as well as distribution of circumvention tools.

    Reverse engineering is specifically *protected* in the DMCA, exempted from its prohibition, allowing you to circumvent access restrictions, if you need to achieve interoperability and the software is "lawfully obtained".

  4. Re:Strangely Relevant to Oracle vs. Google? by rossz · · Score: 4, Informative

    For one, "java" is a slang term for coffee. This was true before the language. That's why the java logo is a steaming cup of coffee. Thus, because it's a common term, it may not be eligible to be trademarked.

    Quite the opposite. The less the term/phrase describes the product, the stronger the trademark. Thus, Apple is an excellent name for a computer company, but would probably be rejected if a fruit company tried to use it as a trademark. Microsoft should have been considered a weak trademark, but they got lucky and have the money to fight any attempts to revoke it.

    Since Java and coffee really don't have anything to do with computing (other than it being the primary component of geek blood), it's a pretty strong trademark.

    IANAL, but got that information from an article written by a trademark lawyer years ago.

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    -- Will program for bandwidth