Tech Companies Set To Appeal 2012 Oracle Vs. Google Ruling

sl4shd0rk writes "In 2012, Oracle took Google to court over Java. In the balance hung the legalities of writing code to mimic the functionality of copyrighted software. The trial was set to determine how all future software would be written (and by whom). Oracle's entire case boiled down to an inadvertent 9 lines of code; an argument over a simple and basic comparison of a range of numbers. The presiding judge (who had some background in writing software) didn't buy it stating he had 'written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before.' A victory for more than just Google. This week, however, Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Netapp have filed for appeal and seek to reverse the ruling. It's not looking good as the new bevy of judges Indicating they may side with Oracle on the issue."

Comments

Death of the small guy

[nurb432]

Soon no one will be able to do stuff on their own, as they will be sued into oblivion just for thinking about something.

Re: Death of the small guy

[fizzer06]

I've had women slap me just for thinking about something.

Re:Death of the small guy

[gstoddart]

Soon no one will be able to do stuff on their own, as they will be sued into oblivion just for thinking about something.

I believe that's the point.

By the time these large companies patent everything and claim ownership of 'innovations' which had been around for years or were widespread knowledge already, the goal is to more or less ensure there's not a damned thing you can do with technology for which you won't be beholden to them.

It's rent-seeking on a large scale, and the governments are just handing it over to them.

At a certain point, it will be impossible for new companies to create anything at all, because the web of patents and the like will be so extensive we'll have only a few large players.

Welcome to the oligarchy of the future. It will only keep getting worse.

Re:Death of the small guy

[Anonymous Coward]

int i;
* door explodes *
"oracle police! hands off the keyboard and lie down on the floor!"

Re:Death of the small guy

[QilessQi]

Soon no one will be able to do stuff on their own, as they will be sued into oblivion just for thinking about something.

I thought of posting that comment first. Expect to hear from my lawyer.

Re: Death of the small guy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had women slap me just for thinking about something.

Running "rangeCheck" on women will often get that response.

Re:Death of the small guy

[mlts]

This is only going to hurt in the long run.

Code is going to be written. It will just be written in countries that don't have the non-functional [1] IP laws, and the products sold from there.

This reminds me of the 1990s and how cryptography development was stifled in the US by ITAR laws. It didn't stop crypto development. What happened was that Russia, Germany, and even China started on the process.

The same thing would happen again. It just means that innovation in coding moves to other countries, perhaps China, Russia, the Ukraine, Brazil, or elsewhere.

Of course, the genie can be put back in the bottle -- locked down devices can prevent code that hasn't been vetted to run, and on desktops, mandatory DRM stacks would ensure the laws are enforced regardless of borders.

[1]: Well, functional for a few, but not as a gestalt.

Re:Death of the small guy

[Sarius64]

If nine lines of code replicated in some fashion (out of presumably millions) is a copyright violation, the other companies with enough capital should launch discovery suits demanding to search every project Oracle has ever performed for any duplicate code from others' copyrights. Software copyrights should be abolished anyway.

Re:Death of the small guy

[ak3ldama]

so they don't even have to pretend to appoint fair judges

Fair Judges? Those same fair judges that the Chamber of Commerce chooses for us? Or those fair judges that get kicked out once called "activist judges" for making otherwise perfectly normal decisions that some member of the "business" community hates? Tell me again who the highest bidder is? This stuff isn't trying to read tea leaves...

Re: Death of the small guy

[Wootery]

Such behaviour is often regarded out-of-bounds.

Re:Death of the small guy

[VortexCortex]

Soon no one will be able to do stuff on their own, as they will be sued into oblivion just for thinking about something.

I believe that's the point.

By the time these large companies patent everything and claim ownership of 'innovations' which had been around for years or were widespread knowledge already, the goal is to more or less ensure there's not a damned thing you can do with technology for which you won't be beholden to them.

It's rent-seeking on a large scale, and the governments are just handing it over to them.

At a certain point, it will be impossible for new companies to create anything at all, because the web of patents and the like will be so extensive we'll have only a few large players.

Welcome to the oligarchy of the future. It will only keep getting worse.

It is FAR worse than you imagine. The current patent laws state that it is not only illegal to sell an infringing technology, but to merely use it yourself. So, even if you, as I do, create your own hardware in your own garage without caring to look at the designs of others, and design hardware and compilers without even a single formal instruction on the topic at hand -- Being that such optimal designs are self evident simply from studying the cybernetic nature of interacting information pools. Even if you've NEVER looked through the patent database -- as all companies tell employees not to do, for risk of treble damages -- your own works can be seen infringing and taken from you. Is that an unlicensed homemade computer or circuit board or OS? Well, we'll be confiscating it for patent infringements. They do not do so currently, but the patent laws say they can prevent your use of technology you've invented independently yourself.

There is absolutely ZERO evidence that patents and copyrights are beneficial. The US plagiarized the Statute of Anne to include a provision for the development of copyright and patents. This is an ideological assumption, much like creationism: It's a good idea to think of things this way because that's the way we've always thought of things. No one has ever tested the damn hypothesis. No engineer or scientist should agree to run the world's economy based on unproven and untested hypotheses that copyright and patents are beneficial. What if they're very harmfull?! It's egregious to take that risk.

Let's examine the Telephone, invented by Elisha Gray, and yet awarded to Alexander Bell. Regardless of who is the rightful inventor, both worked on the problem. Both invested much time and energy. Gray was prevented from benefiting from his works, while Bell was granted a monopoly over the variable resistor solution. Telephone was actually an iteration. We already knew you could transmit language via wire telegraph, we knew you could transmit tones and sounds, but we just lacked the resolution of modulation required for speech. Look at the very symbol for an ingenious good idea -- The lightbulb. Edison did not invent the incandescent bulb! There were prior patents for it. If Edison hadn't existed we would still have found a cheap gas to fill the bulbs with and extend filament life -- Many were working on the problem, but the rich arrive at the solution sooner.

Patents have only ever benefited the big guys over the little guys. Artists, researchers, and scientists are foolishly accepting far too little up front pay for what is scarce: Their ability to do work. They bet their efforts away like gambling addicts in a copyright and patent futures market. So much talent is wasted on work that doesn't pan out, so many bright minds are lost to the economic and employment churn of betting on their future earnings. Even if you do invent something valuable, the Immortal Corporations can just wait 20 years before utilizing it. Instead of paying full price for the valuable act of research and creation o

Re:Death of the small guy

[steelfood]

Of course, the genie can be put back in the bottle -- locked down devices can prevent code that hasn't been vetted to run, and on desktops, mandatory DRM stacks would ensure the laws are enforced regardless of borders.

No, sorry, it can't. There's currently enough technological excellence in other parts of the world that they can design and build unlocked general purpose computers for fairly cheap without U.S. involvement.

The only reason why people pay attention to U.S. laws is because of the strength of U.S. consumers. The U.S. spends and spends. It's a special market unto itself because of how much spending people do, and as a consequence, how competitive the landscape is for those consumer dollars. The money doesn't come from nowhere though. The U.S. has enormous amounts of natural resources to exploit, including a very low overall population density, a habitable climate, and a stable society seen practically nowhere else.

If it becomes more profitable to entirely ignore the U.S. market though, people will stop catering to the U.S. laws and regulations. This can be brought about in a multitude of ways, but one way that's already in progress is the loss of the middle class and thus the loss of total consumer spending power.

That'll be the only way things can return to sanity here; after economic intimidation from other countries.

Bull hockey

[pegr]

Copyright covers creative expressions, not functionality. If I write code identical to yours given only a description of what the code should do, the code is not creative enough for copyright.

Re:Bull hockey

[bsdaemonaut]

One is not required to provide a complete copy of source code for programs exceeding 50 pages of code, 'creativity' is simply not a factor. If someone attempts to prove prior art that's a different factor. One does not have to prove creativity in advance, they only have to defend originality and that's only when it's called into question.

As far as I'm concerned the discussion is irrelevant. Nine lines of code isn't sufficient to prove anything.

Re:Bull hockey

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like the functionality that Flash, Java applets, Active X (security obviously required)... offered. Javascript in being an open standard is taking something like 10-100x as much CPU to do the same thing.

You're an illiterate idiot.

Re:Bull hockey

[pegr]

And you missed "(b) 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."

As Daniel Webster once said

[paiute]

If you have the law, hammer the law. If you have the facts, hammer the facts. If you have neither the law nor the facts, appeal before a judge who has a never used a hammer.

[citation needed]

[DrPBacon]

At trial, documents came out showing that Oracle thought about making a "Java phone" but never did. Controlled chuckles echoed through the courtroom, at which time the judge ordered the last few seconds to be stricken from the record.

If they get this reversed, it will shut them down

[number6x]

How many times have Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Netapp implemented api's from other company's copyrighted software in their own code. Reversing this ruling will make their own code illegal.

In a perverse way, I hope they succeed in overturning the ruling and then proceed to loose all profits for the next few years. The stockholders of these companies should be swinging a very large axe in the 'C' level offices of this band of companies for even thinking of overturning this ruling. A win for Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Netapp would pretty much destroy the viability of the software industry in the USA.

Knowledgable Judges

[Nerdfest]

If I remember correctly, the original judge learned to code for this case and seemed to be quite knowledgable by the end of it, realizing that if APIs could be copyrighted, programming as we know it would pretty much be impossible. Now we have new judges that don't have that knowledge (presumably) and are thinking of reversing the decision. I'd like to know the grounds they'd be thinking of using for that reversal.

Nice to see Microsoft jumping in to help out Oracle. If you're a software developer, my personal opinion is taht you should do everything you can to stop people from buying anything from either of these two companies.

Re:Knowledgable Judges

[rnturn]

``Now we have new judges that don't have that knowledge (presumably) and are thinking of reversing the decision. I'd like to know the grounds they'd be thinking of using for that reversal.''

Just wait until their decision is appealed and this winds up in the Supreme Court. That's where the real technical expertise of the Judicial branch resides.

Re:Knowledgable Judges

[RDW]

Not only did he learn Java to understand the case, but Judge Alsup was already a programmer (and mathematics graduate), putting him in an ideal position to make nuanced judgements about Oracle's arguments:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57445082-94/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-court-and-java/

' Alsup told Boies, "I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America --how could you even make that kind of argument?" '

It seems very unlikely that the current panel will be as well-qualified (which is great for Oracle).

Re:If they get this reversed, it will shut them do

[Tx]

No. Big companies buy up huge defensive patent portfolios, then when they end up infringing each other's IP, they just work out cross-licensing deals with each other; as long as a company has a big enough portfolio of relevant IP, they are pretty safe. It's all very cosy.

Who isn't safe is any new player trying to enter the market, who might as well give up, or at best hope to be bought by one of the established players rather than sued into oblivion.

Only Oracle Filed

[bedroll]

"This week, however, Microsoft, EMC, Oracle and Netapp have filed for appeal and seek to reverse the ruling."

This isn't quite right. The case is between Oracle and Google, the other companies have no standing. Instead, Microsoft, EMC, and Netapp have filed an amicus brief in support of Oracle. They're all companies who stand to benefit from Copyright protection on their APIs.

Black letter law

[jbolden]

What's really lacking here is good quality black letter law about what copyright is supposed to do with respect to software. The courts are trying to fill a void left by our non-functional congress. The right way to be handling Microsoft's concerns is before a congressional subcommittee which can have a detailed hearings draws up legislation that goes to a committee....

Re:Black letter law

[chihowa]

That's how it should technically be handled, but practically the outcome would be worse. Congress is entirely run by lobbyists, with laws drafted entirely by the lobbying parties and consensus decided entirely by "campaign donations".

At least in an open court there is a token effort to decide which argument is the most sound. The courts allow for appeals, too, which is notably lacking in the practical outcomes of the decisions of legislators.

What cause for appeal?

[erroneus]

I'm reading and stuff, but I'm not seeing a reason for appeal. Was there a technical error? I suppose there was that one bit about Alsup declaring APIs can't be copyrighted. I believe Alsup is right. But it doesn't advantage 'big software' in the least that people could be allowed to replace their software with something compatible... which, by the way, was something which I thought was established back when someone rewrote their own BIOS for a PC clone so long ago.

Re:What cause for appeal?

[jbolden]

Here is the appeal: http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Oracle.Appeal.Brief_.pdf

1) Oracle's theory of the technical error is that congress does not want to allow copying that technically avoids the statute so the statue needs to be read broadly it was read narrowly by the original court.

2) Method of operation is copyrightable under a broad reading. They give examples of paraphrases of books being copyrightable. They have a good argument here.

3) Interoperability is not a concern of copyright law and thus the court can't argue that this plays a role. This is key because Google's defense argued that Sun had waived some of their protections.

I just think copyright law is too ambiguous and this needs to be kicked to congress.

Re:What cause for appeal?

[devent]

An API is a collection of facts, those can't be changed, they are like axioms in mathematics or words in a language. In math it's 1+1=2 and in API it would read result = new One().add(new One()) // result is Two. Like you can't change the meaning of "+" you can't change the meaning of "add". The copyright should not hold to the axioms but to the implementation, like copyright does not cover words but sentences.

So if you want to compare an API to a book, then the API are the words of the language the book uses. API is then the words the application is using. You can't copyright words.

Re:What cause for appeal?

[ediron2]

Am sure you're aware that a cookbook can be copyrighted, but not the recipes therein.

Analogously, the API documentation (en masse) can be copyrighted. Format of the documentation, annotations and sample code, etc. are the 'creative work' in this example, but not the recipes (the api calls) or the ingredients (the parameters of those calls). And copyrighting a functional framework itself (especially one that was pushed as a free portable run-anywhere languages so aggressively for more than a decade) is akin to trying to claw back a recipe once it has been shared. It's the epitome of why recipes aren't copyrightable.

This will go to the Supreme Court

[JDG1980]

It's not surprising that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals is looking to side with Oracle. They're notorious for favoring an absurdly over-broad interpretation of patent law, and have been described as a "rogue court". Fortunately, the Supreme Court has shown a great deal of skepticism for the Federal Circuit's decisions, and this crosses traditional party lines (many of the rulings overriding the FC were unanimous or near-unanimous).

My prediction is that the patent shills on the Federal Circuit will side with Oracle, but that the ruling will then be appealed to the Supreme Court, where it will be overturned, setting a binding precedent that APIs cannot be copyrighted.

Groklaw

[imadoofus]

Ugh...I miss Groklaw...

Copyright the English language

[scsirob]

If Oracle succeeds in claiming copyright on the Java API then the next step is natural languages. Today an author can claim copyright on a story written in English. Claiming copyright on the Java API is like claiming copyright on the English language. Every Slashdot member who has ever written an article or even a comment would be liable for copyright infringement if this flies.

I do not know how to stop this insanity but there must be a way to stop big corporations from taking and claiming ownership of everything. This has gone far enough.

Re:Clean room not clean ... no rules for Google.

[thaylin]

Wait, what? So a contractor adds code that Google expressly told them not to, and somehow Google is now lacking in good faith... The mere fact that Google told him not to shows that they were acting is better faith then you are giving him credit for.

Re:If they get this reversed, it will shut them do

[ausekilis]

Lets take this a step further. I don't buy that this is simply a way to get Google to bend over a bit, there has to be more to this. Given that MS has a history of cut-throat tactics to ensure market share, I'm theorizing that this is going to be the start of another round of fighting with the *NIX community, including OSX.

Microsoft has turned it's war on Linux into a tradition, frequently claiming that assorted parts of Linux violate MS copyrights. The general response from the OSS community is "Put up for shut up." If this ruling is overturned, the battlespace changes. MS can claim rights to a lot of violations very easily. SMB, NTFS, and FAT all come to mind, I'm sure there are others. Of course, this door swings both ways, since Active Directory is basically LDAP with Kerberos and a few bells and whistles. Im sure Apple has incorporated or modified some software that belongs to MS, I know they've built on *NIX, since they are BSD based.

None of these OS companies have ever played nice with one another, it'll be interesting to see "Monkey Shit Fight '14: The Revenge"

Dinosaurs against progress

[elashish14]

Anyone looking at this case can see that each side can be classified into one of two groups.

On Google's side, we have companies that are providing new products and innovating in the realm of engineering. Google alone has produced (sometimes through acquisition, but has continued to nurture and develop) Android, Docs, Search (PageRank), Hangouts, Adwords, News, and tons more. People get angry at Google for killing products that they actually use (nobody complained when the Kin or WinRT went away). Likewise, on their side they have companies like Rackspace, Red Hat, Stack Exchange, and a host of others who are still real engineering companies, who develop and promote the adoption of real engineering products which people actually use.

On the other hand, you have dinosaurs like Oracle, Microsoft, EMC, and so on who have more interest in killing competing products via acquisition, lititgation, EEE, and so on. Oracle alone has probably killed more products than it has successfully brought to the market (think OpenOffice and OpenSolaris, there are probably many more). And when they do try to innovate (think of all of Microsoft's failures for example), they fall flat on their face because they don't understand progress or real, sound engineering. But they're the first ones to jump into patent and copyright suits. Microsoft makes more money off Android than they do off their failed mobile efforts. They're not in the business to profit off progress - they're in it to profit off killing others. Google is by no means a saint in this respect, but they're certainly not pathological killers. Companies in this group are just parasites, sucking money out of the industry through shitty developers (shitty because they build upon these companies' shitty products), or through legal or business means including litigation, extortion, bribery, and conflict of interest.

Nothing will stop the companies on Google's side from continuing to innovate and do good in the world with the services they provide. But the courts will decide here whether they're strong enough to support them, or if they want to chum up with the dinosaurs and fight the good fight against continued progress and innovation.

Re:Java stole from C

[SQL Error]

Imagine in the Olympics, 100m dash, the runners are ready to run, the gun goes off.... and the runners start throwing dirt at each other's faces instead of actually racing. Sure, the runner who throws most dirt and kills the other runners will be able to get to the finish line first... but there will be no winners! EVERYONE loses!

That would be awesome.

Re:If they get this reversed, it will shut them do

[pegr]

You can copyright an implementation of a language, but you cannot copyright the language itself. This view is more completely settled in EU law, but there are US cases that have reached the same conclusion.

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~aho/cs6998/lectures/11-10-11_Zimmeck_ProtectPL.pdf
http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2013/01/sas-v-wpl-programming-languages-not.html
http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/january/computer-programming-languages-should-not-be-viewed-as-copyrightable-says-high-court-judge/

Destroy Open Source!

[__aagmrb7289]

This is actually targeting open source. After all, if you can't see the source code, you can hardly say it was "copied" - therefore, you have to protect your software by never letting anyone see the source. Problem solved!

Microsoft likes competition - as long as it's weak

[Rob Y.]

Microsoft never seeks to put its competition out of business. It wants them there
1. As monopoly insurance
2. As a source of ideas to copy

What they do seek to do is ensure that all their competitors operate on the same business model as Microsoft. i.e. writing and selling software with periodic incompatible upgrades that force everyone to buy their software again and again. This is the model Microsoft spent 30 years building monopolies to support, and they know they can win against anybody else operating on this model. But the internet has thrown some big wrenches into it

Open Source bugs them, but since it generates no serious direct revenue, they have a pretty easy time fighting there. After 20 years, OpenOffice still hasn't put much of a dent in Microsoft's software revenue stream. Microsoft can keep prices just low enough to make the free stuff just incompatible enough to be not worth the bother to most users - or at least most users that are willing to pay for an office suite. And a big advertising and lobbying budget doesn't hurt when the competition has neither.

On the other hand, Google perfected the advertising-supported software model. Their model makes tons of money, and when used to fund loss leader free software, it drives Microsoft nuts. Google Docs doesn't hold a candle to OpenOffice functionality or price-wise, but it was enough to bring Office 365 into being. And that's Google's general direction - show that it's possible to compete with even a behemoth like Microsoft when you adopt the web-based paradigm. Web-based apps are probably not as 'good' as desktop apps, but the ease of deployment makes them a win in many cases nonetheless. And then there's Android. The first application of this model to become a viable platform competitor to Windows. Google must be stopped!!!! iOS was never a threat. Apple could keep it's 15% market share, while serving as Microsoft's R&D department. That was the old model, and it seems pretty quaint today.

I still do not understand...

[bayankaran]

...why Google did not buy Sun?

It might be the most boneheaded indecision when the whole Android platform is built on Java.

Re:If they get this reversed, it will shut them do

[reg]

This is not arguing that the language is copyright, but the standard library API. Thankfully the C standard library API is an ISO/IEEE standard, and so is C++, but many, many other libraries are not. Be prepared to have lots of old, failing tech companies come out of the woodwork looking for money... For example, XMLHttpRequest(): is it properly standardized? Not really. Could Microsoft sue? Why do you think they are supporting Oracle... Is it critical to the Web? Yes.

Regards,
    -Jeremy

Lawyers using wrong approach

[reg]

Application Programming Interfaces are like forms - you fill one out and hand it to something to get work done. Then someone hands you back a response. If the Java APIs can be copyrighted then so can the layout of forms. Except US law says forms cannot be copyright (says Wikipedia):

37 Code of Federal Regulations  202.1(c) (2006) ("Blank forms, such as time cards, graph paper, account books, diaries, bank checks, scorecards, address books, report forms, order forms and the like, which are designed for recording information and do not in themselves convey information [are not subject to copyright]"); see also Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1880).

This is just another example of adding "on a computer" and claiming it is something new.

Regards,
-Jeremy