If I were a judge, I would be offended by this brief. Oracle's lawyers are so obviously oversimplifying the case, as the author says, it sounds like the kind of tale you'd spin for a jury. Rather than relying on this terrible, inaccurate distraction, I hope the court takes a very technical interpretation, and acknowledges the difference between a software API and the table of contents of a Harry Potter novel.
Haven't seen posts by Groklaw on HN for a while, or maybe I just missed them. Good to see Groklaw back on the front page, I always like reading the articles.
Is Ann's literary technique obviously illegal? It seems like an interesting literary exercise to me, and if it's illegal to publish the results, that's a pretty interesting development.
According to Oracle it's "obviously" indefensible. They don't say why though, and saying it doesn't make it true. Oracle really has a knack of coming off like a whiny 5 year old (but it's not FAIR) rather than arguing the actual law.
Sure you put a lot of work into the Java libraries, Oracle. (Well, actually you didn't, Sun did). That doesn't mean it's protected by law. There are plenty of things that you can invest heavily in that aren't protected by law. Just because somebody "taps into your fan base" doesn't mean they violated copyright law. By that logic, anybody that creates any Java library that uses core Java APIs as input/output is also using the Java API unfairly.
Yeah, I'd imagine that the same rules that protect literary criticism and summaries (like SparkNotes, CliffNotes, etc.) would apply here.
Then again, the choice of Rowling is probably intentional, because she actually did take an author to court for publishing what was essentially a fan's 'almanac' of character information (ie, a lexicon which would list things like the characters' birthdays, etc.).
