Google Takes the Fight With Oracle To the Supreme Court

whoever57 writes Google has asked the Supreme Court to review the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted. Google beat Oracle in the trial court, where a judge with a software background ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. but the Appeals court sided with Oracle, ruling that APIs can be copyrighted. Now Google is asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision. (Also of interest.)

Comments

Oracle

[Kagetsuki]

Fuck you. You are everything wrong with the software industry.

Re: Oracle

[Zombywuf]

You mean where Google comes along, does a ton of work, and for some reason doesn't think it should have to pay someone else for the work they did?

Seems completely fair to me.

Re: Oracle

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting that Sun Microsystems was responsible for Java, and google went ahead on Android with Sun's blessing. Only aftrer Orcale bought them out did this animosity start.

Java was open sourced. You cannot retroactively change your mind if you become bitter that somebody built something really great with it and is being rewarded for it. That's the point of such licenses. Nobody would trust open source otherwise.

Re: Oracle

[ShanghaiBill]

Do you think that's fair, or legal?

Yes. The purpose of copyright is to protect creativity, not work. The "sweat of the brow" doctrine has been rejected by the US Supreme Court. The creativity should be what lies behind the API, not the API itself. The API itself allows for NO creativity, since even the slightest deviation causes it to fail. Therefore APIs should not be copyrightable. Furthermore, there is a compelling public interest in a competitive market for software, and locked down APIs are a hindrance to that.

Re: Oracle

[ShanghaiBill]

It requires lots of ingenuity and creativity to come up with a set of api.

Sure, but someone else cannot then use different ingenuity and creativity to reimplement the API so that their API works with the same third party applications. They have no choice but to reimplement it exactly. There is precedent for these sorts of interfaces being non-copyrightable. See Lexmark vs SCC. That was a case of Lexmark trying to copyright the handshake protocol to keep third parties from producing compatible printer cartridges. This is the same issue.

Not much different than coming up with a plot for movie with intricate relations between characters and their personalities.

This is not a valid analogy, because someone else can make a movie with a different plot, and it will still work in the same movie projectors.

Re:Oracle

[rahvin112]

Microsoft lost because they had a contract with Sun which said they wouldn't modify the Java Runtime to be incompatible with the standard. They did exactly that. Sun was pretty much guaranteed a win because they had a contract with MS.

Would Sun win if MS had never signed a contract and done a clean room implementation of Java and not called it Java? That I suppose would depend on whether API's are copyrightable which is what Google is asking the court to review.

Re: Oracle

[TheRaven64]

Since it's copyrighted, but not patented (or patentable), you could redesign Linux or *BSD APIs that are similar in principle and operation as the POSIX APIs, but not a complete copy.

Which would have meant that porting code from UNIX to Linux/*NIX would have required shim layers. Worse, it would mean that every program that uses these APIs would be a derived work of UNIX and the UNIX license could prohibit the use of such shim layers.

Just because it affects your pet project does not make it legal.

It's not about my 'pet project', it's about the entire computing landscape. I'd actually be quite happy with a ruling in favour of Oracle: it would completely destroy a large segment of the US software industry and promote investment nearer me...

Oracle trying to undo the GPL decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle are clearly trying to pull Java back from public domain and back to within Oracles control to undo the GPL license Java is under. It's a clever lawyer trick, but Java itself uses copyrighted APIs.

Java was not the first to use Vector, or String classes or Views or any other API and classes it built on. It would be difficult to even identify which *names* of classes are actually new APIs and which are copied from others.

In Oracle's mind, it thinks if it can get away with this is can seize Android, which contains a Java compatible API named set, even though it doesn't use Java and the code is not theirs. But that API set is itself copied from many previous products.

Why do we have trademarks if you can copyright the name of something? (Which is what an API is, its the names of the methods).

Re:Oracle trying to undo the GPL decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle gave a free license for J2SE, whereas Android and mobile devices use J2ME (which costs $$$ and is the money-maker side of Java - Oracle gives squat about J2SE or J2EE because they aren't profit centers).

Android and mobiles devices use Dalvik. The only thing that is Java related is the syntax which goes into the compiler, the stuff that comes out the other side of the compilation process is not Java bytecode and is not compatible with the Java runtime.

And it's really a patent license - that as long as your implementation is J2SE compatible, you're good.

You cannot file a patent for the single line of code "int printf(const char *, ...);", the API is literally a statement of a problem in the absence of the solution. The solution is the implementation of the code inside the functions which is the only part that is patentable.

Of course, if it's really about whether APIs can be copyrighted, this can have far-reach decisions, because it places a bunch of GPL'd stuff on the line. E.g., in the Linux kernel, there are a bunch of utility functions that are exported to GPL-only kernel modules (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). If copyright doesn't apply, then GPL protections can't apply either (since GPL requires copyright in order to function - the GPL grants you rights if you agree to terms, if you don't agree, you agree to standard copyright). And the kernel devs have looked down on proprietary drivers deliberately working around limitations to call those functions.

You fail. That is the opposite way around: all proprietary code is banned from touching the kernel at all by default; they have exceptions to the GPL which permits certain functions to be used without invoking the GPL's requirements. Those protections are based on the derivative works rule and applies because the finished binary is formed by combining actual code from the kernel. This does create a limitation which nVidia exploits with their module, i.e. if you build it on the end user machine and never copy it to a different computer then the GPL doesn't matter since it only controls distribution. Of course, if APIs being copyrighted is possible then this whole discussion is moot since Linux implements the POSIX API which would be wholly owned by AT&T (via Bell Labs) so Linux would be pretty dead.

GPL'd libraries are fine - since the library implementation is GPL'd. But it also means that someone else can use the same APIs and make a non-GPL'd version of the library for proprietary code, like say a non-free version of readline.

And this would be a problem why? They did the work, it's their right to do whatever they want with it.
Have you heard of Wine, an independent implementation of the Win32 API on top of Unix? Have you perhaps heard of Winsock, the Windows TCP/IP library that is used for all network access on Windows, the one which is a straight copy of the original API created by the BSD developers?

Let us consult the Constitution

[Tokolosh]

"The Congress shall have power ... TO PROMOTE THE PROGRESS of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries..." [Caps mine]

This fails the promoting progress requirement.