Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

US Justice Department Urges Supreme Court Not To Take Up Google v. Oracle

Posted by timothy on from the leave-well-enough-alone dept.

New submitter Areyoukiddingme writes: The Solicitor General of the Justice Department has filed a response to the US Supreme Court's solicitation of advice regarding the Google vs. Oracle ruling and subsequent overturning by the Federal Circuit. The response recommends that the Federal Circuit ruling stand, allowing Oracle to retain copyright to the Java API.

10 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. Clean room implementation? by ardentsoap · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, I can't make an API that mimics theirs because copyright?

    1. Re:Clean room implementation? by XanC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can they make Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM's BIOS illegal retroactively, and take back much of the PC revolution?

    2. Re:Clean room implementation? by The+Rizz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If copyright governs interfaces, that part of the law will keep the government from stealing IP away from its rightful owners after twenty years.

      You mean stop government from returning it to the rightful owners. The public (and public domain) are the rightful owners of all information and works - copyright/patents just give exclusive use for a time.

    3. Re:Clean room implementation? by jandrese · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If the laws we have now were in place back then the computer revolution wouldn't have happened. We would still be paying $5000 for IBM Mainframe access terminals.

      Or in a slightly less Dystopian view, computers today would look like iPhones, with one vendor having a stranglehold on the platform and completely anemic third party hardware support outside of cosmetics.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    4. Re:Clean room implementation? by UdoKeir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or Google has been resisting the NSA a little too much.

  2. Someone claim (C) on something oracle depend on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like libc, or whatever, or change licenses to an "Oracle Exclusion License" so stupid things like "Copyrighting APIs" get dropped and common sense rules again.

  3. Re:Wasn't Java open sourced? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google didn't use the open source version (OpenJDK is GPL). They reimplemented it with a more permissive license (Apache2). Oracle is saying they are not allowed to do that.

  4. Re:Java is done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, but that would take a couple billion years.

  5. Mini Sample by koan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of what the TPP is going to do.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  6. Justice Department? by BenJeremy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WTF do they have to do with this case? This isn't a criminal proceeding, it's a civil matter.

    This isn't about "protecting" Oracle (though there may be some $$$ influence involved), but rather more about protecting the copyright racket, strengthening it beyond the accepted scope.

    APIs should not ever be copyrighted. Once you start doing that, it's only a matter of time before Disney copyrights all cartoon renderings of a mouse, or Nickelback gets to copyright all formulaic/generic rock.

    Unfortunately... the Justice Department, likely at the behest of the White House, is intervening to influence copyright law and give corporations even more power. Ugh. It's like our government is pushing to see how far it can go to enslave citizens (the real, human kind, not the corporate nonsense kind) before they decide they've had enough of this shit.

    I'd be inclined to chalk this up as a "First World Problem" but clamping down on technology denies everybody equal access. This is a serious infringement of our freedoms that will have a chilling effect on the progress of technology to help people in their daily lives everywhere in the world. It's not just about Java - it's about any programming language interface.