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SCOTUS Denies Google's Request To Appeal Oracle API Case
New submitter Neil_Brown writes: The Supreme Court of the United States has today denied Google's request to appeal against the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's ruling (PDF) that the structure, sequence and organization of 37 of Oracle's APIs (application program interfaces) was capable of copyright protection. The case is not over, as Google can now seek to argue that, despite the APIs being restricted by copyright, its handling amounts to "fair use". Professor Pamela Samuelson has previously commented (PDF) on the implications if SCOTUS declined to hear the appeal. The Verge reports: "A district court ruled in Google's favor back in 2012, calling the API "a utilitarian and functional set of symbols" that couldn't be tied up by copyrights. Last May, a federal appeals court overturned that ruling by calling the Java API copyrightable. However, the court said that Google could still have lawfully used the APIs under fair use, sending the case back to a lower court to argue the issue. That's where Google will have to go next, now that the Supreme Court has declined to hear the issue over copyright itself.
> Google illegally copied Oracle's shit. Deal with it.
This would make sense to anybody who has never done any actual programming.
A function name and parameter spec is now "someone's shit"? Oracle's position is about as sensible as SCO's was.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So ... basically every modern implementation of C illegally copied AT&T's or K&R's shit?
Mono has illegally copied Microsoft's shit?
The API is a contract, which you publish in order to allow people to use it. But you specifically do publish it.
Java was released by Sun without licensing, just saying you needed to be compatible with the core and not screw things up -- and now retroactively Oracle can claim copyright on it? There sure as hell were other implementations of Java out there which nobody was complaining about.
That pretty much sounds like bullshit. Interoperability is part of fair use. Have we so thoroughly eroded this concept that the copyright lawyers have won?
I'm pretty sure at the time Google was copying those interfaces, not a damned person EVER suggested this required licensing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Call me a pedant, but
> copied shit exactly
Android Inc didn't copy/paste shit; that would be exactly. They built their own VM that runs the same bytecode compile-able from the same source that's freely available all over this mess of the internet. See OpenJDK.
That would be sufficient to make the APIs stop working. Perhaps you should think again about what information is required and copyrightable.
I think that this decision may mean that Google will need to do something like alphabetize the API. (Customized organization can be copyrighted, but alphabetical order can't.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
And yet something written against the Java API can fairly trivially be made to work against the Google API -- well, in theory.
The interfaces for APIs have been borrowed and re-implemented for literally decades. If you retroactively go back and say all of them are licensed and you need to pay money ... you fuck up the entirety of computing history.
Like I said, the standard C library, most of POSIX, the C++ template libraries, Mono ... all sorts of stuff was basically a re-implementation of an API.
This ruling completely ignores several decades worth of precedent, and grants Oracle something nobody else has ever had.
Hell, even Microsoft's vaporware to provide Android support is covered by this. This has very far reaching implications, and makes no sense in the context of computers since the 70s.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So, what exactly does this do to the Open Source movement?
It was my understanding that Java had been open sourced and that made what Android did allowable, and long as the open source agreement lived on is Androids code
Now we see Oracle applying copyright law to Java...
So... did Oracle remove Java from open source?
Are the parts of Java that Oracle claims copyright over not open source?
Has Open Source just been ignored (and invalidated) by the federal court system?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Correct. And _unfortunately_ structure is very much copyrightable. I personally thought that the trial court's opinion which found for Google very strong and persuasive. But anybody who actually knows copyright law knows that the trial court was going out on a limb, and it should surprise _nobody_ that he was overturned on appeal, and that SCOTUS declined to come to his rescue.
Look, you guys need to stop listening to people who work at the Harvard Berkman Center, or similar FOSS advocates with law degrees. We should all _hope_ that their arguments will become the law of the land some day. But their interpretations of copyright law are sadly far from the mainstream. They make it sound like their arguments are slam dunks, but remember that they're lawyers! Worse, they're legal academics! Their whole purpose in life is to persuade people to adopt their perspectives, and what better way to do that than tell people flat out that their perspective is obvious, intuitive, and uncontroversial.
Hopefully Google will still win on Fair Use. It would have been much better if the appeals courts held that APIs were simply not copyrightable. But the fact of the matter is that such a ruling would have been a significant change in copyright law. The appeals courts weren't persuaded to take that step. Them doing so was made less likely by the fact that Fair Use provides a convenient way for courts to mitigate the impact of strong copyright law in narrow cases. So, for example, if they had held that the structure of code and APIs was not copyrightable, it would have had far reaching implications for other fields, like music, film, etc. IMO that would have been a good thing, but the appeals courts didn't want to rock the boat. A Fair Use exception will allow them (if they choose) to effectively exclude APIs without threatening to upturn industry expectations generally.
That would be sufficient to make the APIs stop working. Perhaps you should think again about what information is required and copyrightable.
I think that this decision may mean that Google will need to do something like alphabetize the API. (Customized organization can be copyrighted, but alphabetical order can't.)
Nah, I'm pretty sure Google will win the case against Oracle. There are at least two more defenses they can fall back on.
First, exactly what the summary mentioned: Fair Use. Fair Use is complicated and there are multiple factors to consider but courts generally come down strongest on the economic questions, and there the question is whether Google's action devalued Oracle's property. Speculatively, suppose that Google had had to create its own set of APIs. They could absolutely have been modeled on the Java APIs, but would need to use different names, etc. Google could well have taken the opportunity to clean up a lot of crufty corners of the Java APIs. This would have been a significant undertaking for Google, but wouldn't have been prohibitive by any means. Not doing it saved Google money, but the more interesting question is what was the impact on Java?
I think Google has a really compelling argument that using the Java APIs in what has become the world's dominant personal computing platform's primary development toolset has increased the value of the Java APIs. Although Java was originally built with embedded and mobile devices in mind, without Android it would likely be relegated to being a big systems application language only.
There are probably other Fair Use angles to attack, but that's the one that jumps out at me.
The second defense, and one that seems absolutely deadly to Oracle's claims, is promissory estoppel. Google very much had Sun's approval and cooperation when they decided to use the Java APIs for Android, so it's really nasty of Oracle to try to take that back now, and courts don't buy it.
It would have been better if Google could have established the general principle that APIs are not copyrightable. They shouldn't be, and establishing that would be good for the whole software industry. Barring that, the Fair Use defense could establish a precedent that is almost as good. The estoppel argument solves Google's problem but doesn't do anything to make the industry better.
A Fair Use exception will allow them (if they choose) to effectively exclude APIs without threatening to upturn industry expectations generally.
Unfortunately, fair use claims are judged on a case-by-case basis. Even if Google prevails on this issue, API implementation will be too risky for individual programmers or small companies to undertake.
.: Semper Absurda
I work for Google. Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. We have a version of the Android framework built using C++ and Go. Since the ART VM is language agnostic the transition should be fairly smooth. Once we get all of the initial pieces of the puzzle in place we'll be transitioning to it. It won't happen in M, but will happen in N.
The C++ standard library is already licensed to the public through ISO, as are the POSIX APIs through IEEE.
Having had personal technical experience with both Java ME and Android, I gotta say that from a technology point of view, Java ME was a complete and total dead-end. It was far, far different from vanilla desktop/server java than Android is and therefore had practically zero notice or integration with the Java ecosystem. It was designed to work within the restrictions of devices that had single or double-digit CPU MHz and RAM MBs. It was modelled around Java 1.1, with almost no new language features or APIs. RIM used it as the basis for Blackberry and as a developer, I can tell you it was a decision they regretted.
Android is essentially vanilla Java with only the most esoteric of APIs removed from it, and then device-specific APIs placed on top of it. You can use 95% of existing java desktop/server libraries without any modification. If Google was given the option of using Java ME absolutely for free, or developing their own language and APIs, I guarantee they would have made their own because there would have been a riot among their software developers who would have been forced to essentially develop all of the libraries and google apps using the software equivalent of alphabet blocks and duplo. The additional "device profiles" that were subsequently released were too little, too late and hardly any of them were adopted into devices. I can't imagine any situation where Google would have paid Sun or Oracle for a Java ME license.