

Judge Alsup asks Oracle/Google to brief API issue in light of new EU ruling - grellas
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120503175821298

======
bodski
Phew...

...and for once common sense seems to have been enacted. Props to Alsup and
the EU court for this :-)

The spirit of Borland still lives:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int%27l,_Inc).

~~~
icelandic
Not so fast.

APIs have been copyrightable for more than 20 years.

 _statutory copyright law in the United States and, in particular, the case
law of the Ninth Circuit (and other circuits) already allow copyright holders
to claim protection of the structure, sequence and organization of their
works. Yes, already. On October 3, 1989, the Ninth Circuit held the following
in Johnson Controls v. Phoenix Control Systems:_

 _"A computer program is made up of several different components, including
the source and object code, the structure, sequence and/or organization of the
program, the user interface, and the function, or purpose, of the program.
Whether a particular component of a program is protected by a copyright
depends on whether it qualifies as an 'expression' of an idea, rather than the
idea itself."_

 _paragraph 13:"Here, the district court found that the structure, sequence
and organization of the JC-5000S was expression, and thus subject to
protection. [...] This issue will no doubt be revisited at trial, but at this
stage of the proceedings we cannot say that the district court clearly
erred."_

 _Judge Alsup told Google's counsel that Google had to address the Johnson
Controls decision with a view to the Java APIs._

[http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
courts/F2/886/...](http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
courts/F2/886/1173/19079/)

[http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/oracle-v-google-cant-
make...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/oracle-v-google-cant-make-
apis.html)

~~~
icelandic
the other side of the argument.

 _Google seeks to Europeanize the law of the United States with respect to
copyrightability_

 _Google tries to counter Oracle's very compelling copyrightability argument,
which is very much a Ninth Circuit argument, with inapposite cases from all
across the United States and, which is really ridiculous, by pointing Judge
Alsup to yesterday's EU Court of Justice opinion on a copyrightability issue
under the laws of the European Union._

 _Google even attached the entire ruling (though Judge Alsup could find it on
the Internet) to its proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law._

 _If we were talking about a policy debate and a submission to U.S. Congress,
this would be a legitimate argument to make. But Judge Alsup doesn't make
statutory law. He can do a lot, but he can't turn EU Directive 91/250/EEC on
the legal protection of computer programs into U.S. statutory law. Google is
now wasting his time by hoping that this EU decision is so extremely
persuasive that Judge Alsup will try to legislate from the bench rather than
apply Ninth Circuit law -- but the latter, not the former, is his job._

[http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/google-seeks-to-
europeani...](http://www.fosspatents.com/2012/05/google-seeks-to-europeanize-
law-of.html)

~~~
magicalist
That's not the other side of the argument, that's Florian's ridiculous
assessment that he wrote before the Judge had even read the EU opinion and
asked about it specifically in the linked list of questions. Florian's
argument relies on his assumption that Alsup doesn't want to be "innovative"
with the law, so therefore he must base it on Johnson, which isn't anything
like the ironclad logic he's presenting it as.

While he likely will want to avoid wandering into new territories, it's been
23 years since Johnson, and many cases (including the ones listed in the
linked groklaw article) have touched on very similar areas of IP law. A
smoking gun case on APIs is not necessary for there to be applicable
precedent.

Meanwhile, EU court decisions certainly do indirectly influence judgements in
the US, _especially_ on tricky areas with very little precedent. At the very
least, in this case it gave Alsup another judge's perspective. The EU does
have much more specific laws governing copyright here, but if you read the
actual opinion or anything about it (instead of Florian's weird Fox News style
mention of it), it goes into specifically _why_ APIs should not be
copyrightable and the chilling effects allowing otherwise would cause.

The idea that this is a matching game, "find the most similar court case and
repeat the verdict" is, again, ridiculous.

Finally, stop registering new accounts just to quote Florian at us.

~~~
icelandic
>especially on tricky areas with very little precedent.

"very little precedent"? Judge Alsup specifically told Google's counsel to
address the Johnson Controls decision.

 _Judge Alsup told Google's counsel that Google had to address the Johnson
Controls decision with a view to the Java APIs._

>it's been 23 years since Johnson, and many cases (including the ones listed
in the linked groklaw article) have touched on very similar areas of IP law. A
smoking gun case on APIs is not necessary for there to be applicable
precedent.

You are simply wrong on this. Why is a similar case not considered prior
applicable precedent?

>EU court decisions certainly do indirectly influence judgements in the US.
especially on tricky areas with very little precedent.

Johnson Controls v. Phoenix Control Systems

I don't care if you like Florian or not. look at the facts and decide.

~~~
magicalist
> "very little precedent"? Judge Alsup specifically told Google's counsel to
> address the Johnson Controls decision.

Yes, and Alsup just asked Google and Oracle to address the EU decision on SAS
v. WPL. They've both addressed many other relevant cases. Is this what we're
going on?

> You are simply wrong on this. Why is a similar case not considered prior
> applicable precedent?

That was not what I wrote. What I said was that Johnson is not the _only_
applicable precedent and that it was ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

~~~
icelandic
Johnson Controls decision has more weight compared to the EU decision.

------
jan_g
I am very ambivalent to this issue of Oracle vs Google.

On one hand I'd like Oracle to lose, because what's the point of touting Java
as free and releasing open jdk, if you then go around and sue other companies.
Legal issues aside (I am not a lawyer), I feel this 'copyrightable API' is
stupid and counterproductive.

On the other hand I want Oracle to win and then hopefully Google will move
away from Java. Then Oracle will effectively have killed Java on mobile and
have only themselves to blame.

~~~
ajray
While that's a nice thought, I don't think that ruling in favor of Oracle will
magically make Android _poof_ into a new language/api/framework. It'd take
lots of effort, and in the meantime fall way behind Apple. I'm not even sure
the cost of trying to keep up with the iPhone would be justified in that case.

------
hetman
I'm interested by the statement that "the Copyright Act is meant to protect
expression but not vocabulary". Could someone familiar with copyright law
elaborate on this?

I'm interested in the general concept, but also curious how it applies to
specific cases. For example, is the format of a media file just as
copyrightable as the contents represented by it? Is this in line with the
spirit of copyright?

~~~
clavalle
The format of a media file is not vocabulary.

The format of a media file is possibly patentable not copyrightable.

In terms of, say, music, vocabulary would be notes, scales, the sound of
instruments, even to some extent, phrasing.

Film would be lighting effects, framing etc. etc.

Basically, vocabulary is the stuff that is meaningless by itself but represent
critical parts to the whole of a creative work when arranged in a meaningful
fashion.

So that is the crux of the question: is an API meaningful in it's own right or
is it just a building block that holds little meaning by itself and exists
only to be composed into meaningful works?

------
randomfool
If SSO is copyrightable, am I infringing on their copyright when I implement
an interface?

~~~
randomfool
Specifically, my understanding is that Oracle is saying that the Structure,
Sequence and Organization (SSO) of method names, parameters and return values
is copyrightable.

Looking at the documentation for the List interface
(<http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/List.html>), it states '©
1993, 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.'.

So, if I implement that interface based on the documentation then I'm basing
my code on Oracle's copyrighted API and I'm explicitly cloning Oracle's SSO.
So I've committed copyright infringement?

------
0xABADC0DA
> But that is precisely what copyrighting APIs will achieve, a monopoly on
> computer languages, because without the APIs, as one witness told the court
> in Oracle v. Google, Java is blind and deaf. It can't be used for much, if
> anything. Even "Hello World" requires APIs

That's just not true. You can create your own classes for IO, or anything
else, implemented as native methods. The only problem you have is if you want
to _copy_ the whole structure, sequence, and organization of _Sun_ 's API that
_Sun_ designed. For instance if you want the use the C library functions to
implement your new Java classes, that's fine since you aren't copying the SSO
of them.

I think a lot of people have to jump to these 'sky is falling' 'it'll break
the internet' arguments because they refuse to accept that Google is the bad
apple here. Google copied Sun's work, didn't pay Sun for it, and at the same
time destroyed Sun's future revenue from Java licenses (as everybody just used
Android for free). This was probably a significant factor in the decision to
sell Sun (the Schwartz mentioned for instance that some companies were not
renewing their Java license).

But this is capitalism not morality, and when somebody else creates something
you want you pay them for it. That's really the issue here, Google used Sun's
work and didn't pay.

~~~
bad_user
You can also come up with your own words to replace those of the English
language, while continuing to use the same grammar, but that won't be English
anymore, with the proof being that nobody will understand what you're saying.

This is exactly what a standard API provides for a language ... the standard
vocabulary of that language, without which that language is no longer the same
language. The distinction itself between the standard API and Java the
language simply does not exist and never in Java's history was the API pushed
out of context when Sun/Oracle referred to Java ... quite the contrary, to
pass the TCK and be able to use the "Java" trademark, then you have to
implement those APIs.

I invite you to watch the presentation of Guy Steele (one of Java's designers)
on "Growing a Language" ...
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415>

    
    
         they refuse to accept that Google is the bad apple here
    

The lawsuit barely started and you've got to prove first that Google is the
bad apple here. Quite the contrary, it doesn't look good for Oracle.

I do think that people side with Google on this one because otherwise it would
open a huge can of worms, as other useful projects on which we rely on could
cease to exist. This is not fanboyism, but rather self-preservation.

    
    
         Google copied Sun's work, didn't pay Sun for it,
         and at the same time destroyed Sun's future revenue 
         from Java licenses
    

This sentence made me laugh, because Sun destroyed its own future revenue by
being incapable of releasing anything that comes close to Android. Sun
destroyed its own future because of its own incompetence. As I view it, Google
helped Sun because Android is keeping Java fresh and relevant.

    
    
         But this is capitalism not morality
    

Well, actually, true capitalism excludes _government-granted monopolies_ ,
because that goes against the concept of _the free market_. And copyright and
patent protections are just that, government granted monopolies promoted by
people and companies that rely on legislature to keep them relevant, instead
of building and selling stuff to customers.

It's also funny that you bring the issue of "morality" into discussion, as
arguments based on morality are often used to justify these government-granted
monopolies, contrary to the law of the fittest that applies to the free
market, which is immoral and unforgiving.

