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Jury Rules Google Violated Java Copyright, Google Moves For Mistrial
eldavojohn writes "Details are thin, but the long-covered Oracle v. Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle. The jury says Google violated copyrights with Android when it used Java APIs to design the system. Google moved for a mistrial after hearing the incomplete decision. The patent infringement accusations have yet to be ruled upon."
Does the judge now have to rule on whether API's can be copyrighted?
IIRC, the judge instructed to have the jury come to their decision based on the concept that the material in question could be copyrighted. The judge still has the final says as to whether the material *CAN* be copyrighted. That's still a big if for this case, so it's not over yet.
The jury was instructed that APIs were copyrightable. They found that Google infringed Sun/Oracle's Java API. But the judge will actually decide later whether APIs are in fact copyrightable (which question will almost certainly go to the Supreme Court before it's all over).
So what the jury actually decided doesn't mean much. It means that Google copied the Java API. Well, yeah, we knew that already.
From Groklaw: "The judge has stated, pending judgment as a matter of law, that there is "zero finding of copyright liability" other than the 9 lines of code to which Oracle's damages report attributes no value."
In other words, a very good day for Google, not Oracle.
The JUDGE said "based on the assumption that SSO's are copyrightable" make your rulings.
In no manner are SSO's (or API's) copyrightable at this point.
It is all to give the Jury a baseline from which to make their own decision.
Does anybody really read these things before making up headlines, or is sensationalism the only way to get eyeballs,
nevermind understanding?
Copying the "structure, sequence, and organization" of the Java APIs is the definition of implementing an object-oriented interface, regardless of the specifics of the implementation.
The article is also incorrect when it says Android is the "only" project/product impacted by the decision. There's this little Apache project that wrote the code Android uses, so every product or project which relies on that code is affected by this ruling. They just haven't been sued yet.
The essence of this ruling is that publishing something under open source means nothing if the copyright holder later changes their mind. And that is the biggest blow to the software industry that could have been levelled by any company for any reason, because it affects over 75% of the systems which implement the infrastructure of the internet.
When (not "if") this idea is propagated to the POSIX APIs, the C-library interfaces, the C++ standard libraries, and a host of other open source products and packages, the whole industry is fucked!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Wow, copy and paste fail. Now with HTML entities
From http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~martin/webrevs/openjdk7/timsort/raw_files/new/src/share/classes/java/util/TimSort.java, here are the 9 lines of code that google is accused of infringing:
private static void rangeCheck(int arrayLen, int fromIndex, int toIndex) {
if (fromIndex > toIndex)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("fromIndex(" + fromIndex +
") > toIndex(" + toIndex+")");
if (fromIndex < 0)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(fromIndex);
if (toIndex > arrayLen)
throw new ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException(toIndex);
}
The code boils down to: if (x > y || x < 0 || y > max) { error(); }
Tell me how you'd write the code differently. (Keep in mind that the engineer who wrote this, Josh Bloch, used to work at Sun, then moved to Google. It's very possible he rewrote the code in the exact same way, given its triviality.)
A view with a greater understanding of the implications, Groklaw believes otherwise: "The judge has stated, pending judgment as a matter of law, that there is "zero finding of copyright liability" other than the 9 lines of code to which Oracle's damages report attributes no value. A good day for Google overall."
Read it yourself and decide: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120507122749740
Judge Alsup asked both parties to answer a list of questions, following the EU High Court decision that APIs are not copyrightable expression: "1. If the Copyright Act is meant to protect expression but not vocabulary, should the vocabulary and grammar of a computer language be copyrightable, as distinct from programs written in the language? In this regard, please comment on the May 2, 2012, decision of the High Court of the European Union." The Judge will rule as a matter of law whether the SSO of the APIs are copyrightable.
The only website that seems to always get the legal pulse right is Groklaw.
The issue is that Google set out with j
The Java API manual and recreated them ALL with the same names and function calls, etc... That's pushing it even for open source projects.
As opposed to Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman starting with the UNIX manual and painstakingly recreating all the APIs?
This is google's direct chance to get the whole software -> patents thing invalidated. Many have been unwilling to fight for getting such a ruling, but I would bet a lot of money on google setting this up to invalidate patents on software.