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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google (bloomberg.com)
Google could owe Oracle billions of dollars after an appeals court said it didn't have the right to use the Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices. From a report: Google's use of Java shortcuts to develop Android went too far and was a violation of Oracle's copyrights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled. The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet unit should pay.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
The dispute is over pre-written directions known as application program interfaces, or APIs, which can work across different types of devices and provide the instructions for things like connecting to the internet or accessing certain types of files. By using the APIs, programmers don't have to write new code from scratch to implement every function in their software or change it for every type of device. The case has divided Silicon Valley for years, testing the boundaries between the rights of those who develop interface code and those who rely on it to develop software programs.
On the one side you have the engineers that rely on APIs to Get Stuff Done, on the assumption that that's why the APIs exist. On the other side you have the 1% parasites who realize "oops, somebody took our work and made billions off it. Bring in the lawyers!"
Of all the bad laws being thought up in the EU, at least they got the API copyright decision correct.
APIs are not copyright-able in the EU according to their highest court.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/eus-top-court-apis-cant-be-copyrighted-would-monopolise-ideas
I used to work for Oracle. They are much, much worse! My manager pulled down his $40K/quarter bonus by billing customers for work that wasn't actually done.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
And the amount of client-side Java code being replaced by HTML5 is staggering. Java is considered obsolete, and is being replaced just about everywhere it exists.
I work in the cable industry. The amount of set-top box code that's being refactored away from Java is in, and of itself, mind blowing.
Few companies can make Microsoft seem the less evil alternative (C-sharp/.NET), and Oracle is one of them.
Microsoft has open sourced the core of .NET under an MIT license, plus a patent grant. It's not hard to seem more evil than that...
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You realise that itâ(TM)s not illegal or infringement to clean-room reimplement a language, right?
The only thing Oracle has, if no significant copyright code was stolen, is to argue that APIs are copyright-protectable.
That is why this is all about APIs. And why the outcome, and every company arguing for it via amicus brief, is a threat.
Itâ(TM)s now a proxy fight over the future of the entire service-based internet.
LMOL client side coding? HTML5? Time to call it a day Potsy. You do realize people stopped using Java Applets a LONG TIME ago for web development. However server side Java and embedded Java is an enormous market.
FFS... we need a special court for tech cases.
It seems that way, but I'm not sure why it should be. ... I think I could make that pretty obvious to most people, even a judge.
Unfortunately it often isn't. The initial judge learned to program so he could understand the case. He admitted his learning was rudimentary, but enough to understand what was going on. The appeals judges did not and that has been a point of contention. The only one in the legal system who learned to program was the trial court judge, and he threw out most of the arguments as a result. The appeals courts and the solicitor general have made their decisions without that, and Google's appeals say the knowledge is imperative.
Consider back in 2011, Justices Elena Kagen (age 51 at the time) and Stephen Breyer (age 73 at the time) had game consoles brought in and they learned to play multiple violent games so they could fully understand the case. They followed instructions on how to play their way through to the scenes that the plaintiffs found most objectionable, the ones where they say people were lighting children on fire and smashing their heads to get points.
If judges don't know enough to make a properly informed decision and they cannot gain that knowledge from case law and subject experts, it is their duty to gain that knowledge. There have been judges who took up hiking in dangerous situations, visited a wide range of locations from pig farms to remote deadly roadways, and studied arcane subjects in order to make a fair judgement.
Note that the first time around the question was split into three parts: copyright, patent, and damages. The judge learned how to program. In trials there are question of law and questions of fact; the judge decides questions of law and the jury decides questions of fact. The judge ruled from his experience learning to code that many of Oracle's claims were invalid on their face, and didn't allow them to go to the jury trial. The declaration was that "it does not matter that the declaration or or method header lines are identical," even though Oracle decided they were. The non-programmer appeals court judges reversed the decision. The Solicitor General (who also doesn't know how to program) recommended against a SCOTUS ruling at the time, letting it go back to the lower courts for further defense.
It headed back to the lower court for this second round. The judge and the jury decided there should be no damages because of the fair use exception in copyright law. The jury included people who knew how to program, and they decided it was perfectly legal due to fair use. Now the appeals judges (who still don't know anything about programming) is countermanding the jury's findings, which rarely happens.
Google should absolutely appeal. The next level is the full en banc review. They asked earlier for members of the three judge panel to learn to code, but they apparently did not convince them. Their lawyers should (and I'm sure they are) using that fact in their appeals. While the judges are comfortable enough with books and movies to apply copyright law in those cases, they can argue that unlike the trial court judge who learned to program to answer the questions, the appeals judges did not have a sufficient understanding to make these determinations, thus even though they understood the wording of law they still committed an error of judgement by failing to fully understand the content of the case.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement