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A California Jury Finds Copyright Infringement In an Interface (deepchip.com)
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.
The whole idea that a jury can decide one way or another on a technical matter is pretty idiotic, and a misapplication of jury process as it enshrines decision making on the basis of ignorance.
In fact the whole legal system is back to front on this issue, since having specialist domain knowledge in an area often precludes you from serving on a jury in a relevant case. That's severely illogical.
Not even judges should have the power to make such decisions, because they are experts in law. not in technical topics. Making a good decision based on pro/con arguments presented by technical experts does not mean that the decision will be a good one, because a judge's second-hand understanding will always be superficial at best.
There are two good sources for informed decision making on technical topics: the professional institutions in a technical domain (such as IEEE, IEE/IET, BCS, ACM), and vocational academic bodies created for this purpose and barred from commercial influence. No human-based decision making can be perfect, but this would at least eliminate the ill-informed harm being done by judges and the general public working outside of their competency.
If you beleive anything you might have learned in computer science surely it is that spending time to get the API right is the most important thing. populating the implementation of the sub sections defined by the API is the work you give to the C-students. You let the A-students come define the interface. The API is the most valuable part of the whole
The API is no doubt important. Your post reads as possibly sarcasm, but either way, the implementation is at least as important. Screw that up, and your API means nothing. Also, your API will reflect what your code actually does. Even the best engineer is likely not going to see deeply enough to build a perfect API the first time. Actual coding is very likely to cause revisions to the API that better reflect how things should be, once the problem can be better understood.
All that being said, none of this addresses the original question. Should APIs be copyrightable? Sure, they arguably are a creative work, but if you allow a copyright on that aspect of a creative work, such that it cannot be duplicated you cause monopoly situations which are not in favour of the world at large. Think of the Java thing, by not allowing someone to write a compatible API, it means that everything Java would go back to one corporation that can just rake in the bucks, because writing a completely new API breaks everyone else's work and requires a almost total rewrite.
Basically allowing API's to be copies is, imnsho, a reasonable fair use exception. Interoperability is more important than another multinationals profit.