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Court: Oracle Entitled To Copyright Protection Over Some Parts of Java

Posted by Soulskill on from the cue-the-wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth dept.

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."

5 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. lesson to be learnt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a lesson to be learnt here: Never depend on programming language, which is not under appropriate free license.

    Apache Foundation, do you hear me?

  2. Re:Coder Boycott by RichMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ruling means that any library in any language can be shut down. It means that public interface declarations can be copyright. It means it could be impossible for anyone to reproduce a public interface.

    AkA it makes all public interfaces private. It is not just a Java specific ruling, it has implications across all coding environments.

  3. Wrong, wrong, wrong by reg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a very bad decision and is only going to harm the software industry. This is Google's fault for using the wrong arguments. APIs are digital forms. You fill one in and give it to a worker, it does what you asked (possibly with side effects) and returns results. This is not an analogy, it is a fact. Forms are not copyrightable, for good reason. Imagine if every bank had to make up a new name for a 'deposit slip', and someone could copyright "First Name, Last Name" on a form! Google copied Java's API, the same as businesses have been copying each others forms since the dawn of time, and for the same reason: its easier to present a known interface to customers.

    Regards,
    -Jeremy

  4. Re:Coder Boycott by Kaenneth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It WILL have a huge 'Chilling Effect' though, even if you are in the right, and it is fair use, can you afford to defend against a huge corporation suing you?

  5. Re:Coder Boycott by reg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't be naive. This will be used to shut down APIs. Increasingly the software world is a set of web based and hosted APIs, with big money but little business behind them. Imagine, for example, someone like Snapchat copying Twitter's API to enable their service to grow faster. This ruling, it is stands, will be used by incumbents to shut down start-ups or open-source/non-spyware clones.

    Probably Google's biggest mistake at the get go was to not do a /Java/Davlik/g. Since all code needs to be recompiled, this can be done easily by the build system while maintaining a single source file...

    Regards,
    -Jeremy