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Court: Oracle Entitled To Copyright Protection Over Some Parts of Java
An anonymous reader writes "Remember the court battle between Google and Oracle? It's the one where Oracle claimed Android violated Oracle's patents and copyright related to Java. Oracle thought they deserved $6 billion in compensation, but ended up getting nothing. Well, it's still going, and the tide is turning somewhat in Oracle's favor. An appeals court decided that Oracle can claim copyright over some parts of Java. It's a complicated ruling (PDF) — parts of it went Google's way and parts of it went Oracle's way — but here's the most important line: '[T]he declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the 37 Java API packages at issue are entitled to copyright protection.' A jury's earlier finding of infringement has been reinstated, and now it's up to Google to justify its actions under fair use."
In the original trial, the jury found that Google had infringed on the Java API (37 API packages including the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization). Shortly thereafter, the judge ruled that those things were not copyrightable, thus Google didn't need to pay.
Now, the appeals court has reversed that, and said that those things are copyrightable.
Because the original jury was deadlocked on the question of whether Google's copying was fair use, it needs to go back to trial. But only the fair use will be considered in that trial, not copyrightability.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This has nothing to do with using Java. It has to do with implementing your own incompatible version of the language. If all you want to do is use Java, or implement a compatible version, the license is good and you will have no problem.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Umm if you actually check mono's compatibility notes, it has ridiculous good compatibility distinguished between the various versions of .NET. While there will always be a lag, if you develop with Mono, you know what works and what doesn't. .Net 3.0 and 3.5 are pretty mainstream and 4.0 is pretty much good to go for a broad set of use cases.
Do you have any questions which political party
Both major U.S. political parties have shown themselves to favor expansion of the exclusive rights of copyright owners. See the No Electronic Theft Act, the Copyright Term Extension Act, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
(I actually read the court ruling before posting this)
tl;dr version: The results will likely be awful, but the decision appears legally correct.
Google won at trial because the judge decided that the Java API was not copyrightable. I absolutely believe that API's should not be copyrightable, but that isn't what the law says. Copyrightability has a very low threshold. The trial judge screwed up by applying legal standards related to fair use to the question of copyrightability. The appeals court was correct to reverse.
The case now goes back to the district court. There will be a new trail with a new jury, but the only issue will be whether Googe's copying of the Java API is fair use. The original jury deadlocked on this question. Fair use decisions are very subjective, so it's hard to predict how this will turn out. All I can say is that I hope Google wins.
P.S. None of this decision was related to patents. Oracle lost on their patent claims at trial, and that stands.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
1. Isn't actually true. You need to stay well within the lines or draw the ire and lawsuits from Oracle
2. Isn't true because you need to to be licensed by Oracle in order to be verified as 'compatible' and if they say no then guess what?
3. Yup, that's pretty much the only route you have
Bye!
It may be surprisingly readable, but Justice Alsups original ruling was extremely clear cut, no nonsense and demonstrated a clear understanding of technical issues and accepting Oracles arguments.
It may have been clear cut, but he was wrong. The present ruling explains why, read it.
Essentially: 1) He muddled his logic between 'copyrightablity' and 'fair use,' two different concepts.
2) He didn't respect previous rulings and standard court procedures (such as the Abstraction, Filteration, Comparison test).
3) A lot of his logic rested on the Lotus case, which isn't commonly used as a precedent, and isn't relevant to this case anyway.
Realistically there's no reason to believe that APIs aren't copyrightable. Do you deny that building an API requires a lot of creativity? Making a good API is hard work, and deserves protection as much as music does. This isn't even a particularly important question (whether anything at all deserves protection is another issue; here we are talking about what is currently legal).
The more important and relevant question is whether the Google usage falls under fair use. If it does, then they can use the API anyway.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If all you want to do is use Java, or implement a compatible version, the license is good and you will have no problem.
This is completely false. Oracle changed the rules around for what it means to be "compatible" so that only projects that Oracle likes will be deemed compatible. Apache is being forced into a Java Fork:
The problem's core is that first Sun, and now Oracle, won't give Apache a chance to certify Apache's Project Harmony as being Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) compliant.
Apache: I know my rights. I want my compatibility certification!
Oracle: How can you get a certification if you can't take the test?
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin