

Oracle's 'APIs are copyrightable' defense = nightmare for programmers - jfruh
http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/196381/impact-oracles-defense-api-copyrights

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rwolf
It is painful to watch the guys at itworld go into a spiel about APIs, only to
realize the intern they asked to look this up thinks they were talking about
web APIs like Twitter.

Sheesh.

~~~
_delirium
In terms of scope I can agree that there is a bit of a difference, in that
we're talking about whether you can copyright an entire library design versus
a specific limited set of interconnection points. But even that would be
problematic and contrary to existing practice; for example, Wine's
reimplementation of the Win32 API would be a copyright violation if the Win32
API (and not just the code implementing it) is copyrightable. It contradicts
the assumptions behind clean-room reverse engineering as well, which are that
how-something-works documentation doesn't taint copyright of a new
implementation that follows it as a spec.

~~~
ismarc
There's also the middle ground of the mysql api that has long been claimed as
being under the gpl (but never tested in court as far as I know). There is a
real danger here that could affect emulators, compatability layers, really any
interoperability in place of proprietary systems and would be a real step
backwards. But, we are not the audience of the article and web apis are easier
to explain to non-developers.

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timf
I found this to be a better treatment of the subject:
[http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/oracle-defends-
copyr...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/oracle-defends-
copyrightability-of-apis.html)

~~~
joe_the_user
Ah, you mean Oracle shill Florian Mueller?

Our "professional corporate communicator" certainly spends a lot of effort
looking at these cases but his role in publicizing a _a variety_ of bogus
claims such as the various "Android violates the GPL" efforts inclines me to
count my fingers and neurons after I read his blog.

~~~
timf
Thanks for pointing that out. But law does sometimes conflict with how we wish
things were or how things should just obviously work, and I don't pretend to
know any better on the specifics (I certainly _hope_ that there is indeed a
precedent that protects abstract APIs from being copyrighted).

The guy did start the NoSoftwareParents campaign, so I don't know how much of
an "Oracle shill" he could really be. Hard to really know, of course.

<http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/en/m/about/manager.html>

~~~
joe_the_user
Mueller is a lobbyist. IE, he has a long history of being to represent various
positions not of which are necessarily consistent (he has represented
coalitions of closed-source companies for example).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florian_M%C3%BCller>

I'm not sure what is behind his current slant. However, I believe he created
nosoftwareparents.com when he was working for MySQL. Oracle's acquisition of
MySQL might be an explanation, here.

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sutro
So I guess Oracle owes IBM a lot of money for its use of SQL through the
years.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Indeed, and since this is a copyright rather than a patent IBM could
presumably still assert it. For that matter, if this is upheld it seems as
though IBM could go after all the makers of IBM-compatible BIOS chips through
the years -- the situation seems virtually identical, right down to the clean-
room reimplementation.

Careful with that blunt legal instrument, Larry...

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Doug-W
Time to register my copyright on int main( int argc, const char* argv[] );

~~~
floppydisk
Copyrighting return might have a good ROI as well!

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7952
How exactly do you even define an API in real world terms? You can't see it,
touch it, smell it, or hear it. If you can copyright an internal API, you can
copyright anything.

~~~
groovy2shoes
It's very possible to be able to see some representation of an API. They'd be
virtually useless if you couldn't. The reason APIs aren't copyrightable is
that such a copyright would defeat the entire purpose of an API:
interoperability between bits of software.

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ansy
To me copyrights for APIs should be treated the same as for recipes and games.
You can't copyright the list of ingredients or design, respectively, but you
can copyright any text or images that goes with it. In the case of an API, the
specific documentation such as JavaDocs would be copyrighted.

