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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."
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.
I've had women slap me just for thinking about something.
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
int i;
* door explodes *
"oracle police! hands off the keyboard and lie down on the floor!"
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.
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
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
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.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."