A California Jury Finds Copyright Infringement In an Interface (deepchip.com)

Posted by timothy on Friday March 11, 2016 @12:56AM from the make-yours-look-like-mine dept.

whoever57 writes: A California jury in one of the cases between Synopsys and Atoptech found copyright infringement in Atoptech's use of the "Primetime commands". These companies compete in the field of EDA ("Electronic Design Automation") software: software that is used by semiconductor companies to design ICs. The Primetime commands are merely an interface. Atoptech has their own implementation of the functionality that these commands [provide]. This can be seen as similar to the Oracle vs. Google lawsuit, in which an appeals court has found that providing a similar interface (via header files) can constitute copyright infringement. Naturally, there will be appeals in this case.

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Re:Technical topics are not a jury competency by tsstahl · 2016-03-11 02:41 · Score: 4, Informative

Judges can appoint a 'special master' to impartially advise the court on technical issues.
Juries very well may get technical matters wrong, but that is one reason why there are appellate courts.
I doubt many criminal juries are staffed by people expert in homicide, yet we do not doubt their ability to render a verdict.