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Google Takes the Fight With Oracle To the Supreme Court

Posted by timothy on from the by-the-power-your-black-robe-we-beseech-thee dept.

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.)

5 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Oracle by Kagetsuki · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    1. Re: Oracle by Zombywuf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If you can read this you've gone too far.
    2. Re: Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re: Oracle by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Oracle trying to undo the GPL decision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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).