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Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court To Rule APIs Can't Be Copyrighted

Posted by Soulskill on from the pleading-for-sanity dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The EFF, representing a coalition of computer scientists, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court yesterday hoping for a ruling that APIs can't be copyrighted. The names backing the brief include Bjarne Stroustrup, Ken Thompson, Guido van Rossum, and many other luminaries. "The brief explains that the freedom to re-implement and extend existing APIs has been the key to competition and progress in both hardware and software development. It made possible the emergence and success of many robust industries we now take for granted—for example, mainframes, PCs, and workstations/servers—by ensuring that competitors could challenge established players and advance the state of the art. The litigation began several years ago when Oracle sued Google over its use of Java APIs in the Android OS. Google wrote its own implementation of the Java APIs, but, in order to allow developers to write their own programs for Android, Google's implementation used the same names, organization, and functionality as the Java APIs."

4 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Don't like it make your OWN APIs! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    U.S.A. #1

  2. A law's bad effects aren't decisive by livecut · · Score: 1, Insightful

    As an earlier comment cogently observes, the API IS the intellectual property, dating back through Java, the x86 CPU market and plug-compatible mainframes. The Court has to decide whether APIs are copyrightable expressions of creative works (lawyers, please comment.) I hope they're not, but fear they are.

  3. Re:APIs can be creative works; we need another pla by darrellm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The APIs that Linus used for Linux were not ones in general that he created. These APIs already existed in Unix. Linux was essentially a Unix cloning project. Rewriting it to remove the intellectual property attachments that still existed in Unix. The model that Google followed with Java for Android was very similar to what Linus did for the Linux rewrite of Unix. If the copyrightable APIs that you desire existed at the time then Linux could never well have come into existence and we would only have proprietary Unix which would have never would have taken off like Linux has since the primary attraction of Linux is the open source nature of it.

  4. Re:As any developer worth their salt knows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Intellectual property" is a propaganda term designed to conflate multiple unrelated things (copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.). I suggest you people drop it. When you mean copyright, say copyright. When you mean patents, say patents. Etc.