
Supreme Court to Hear Google-Oracle Copyright Fight - nwrk
https://www.axios.com/supreme-court-google-oracle-copyright-fight-c5de0f29-b6ff-436e-afe0-68f794a62ad6.html
======
vessenes
I'd say almost every software engineer should be rooting for Google here. The
implications of being able to claim copyright infringement on anyone
implementing an Application Programming Interface are staggering - it would
impact every open source project that tried to interoperate with any company's
services, for instance.

The world is not going to be better for extending the protections Oracle wants
here.

Alsup's ruling is sane, shows his clear understanding of coding and the
history of Java and how it was licensed out to the world under Sun, and is
really very simple to understand:
[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522459)

The appeals court fucked this up, hard. I would like to think Alsup's ruling
will be upheld -- groklaw has fantastic quotes from him during the trial. At
one point, he himself notes he had coded from the spec some of the functions
Oracle complained about and disagreed with Oracle counsel statements.
Refreshing from our judicial branch, to say the least.

~~~
ecopoesis
But this case isn’t about consuming or interacting with an API, it’s about
implementing an API. So less writing a compiler targeting a CPU instruction
set and more building a CPU based on someone else’s instruction set.

I’ve always found it strange that other programmers are so dismissive of APIs
as copyrightable work. They’re they hard part! Building APIs requires
creativity and careful thought.

If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the
evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning?

~~~
curun1r
I think the answer lies in compatibility and lock-in. Software and even
hardware gets built against APIs. If APIs are protectable through copyright
and a single entity can control who can and cannot implement that API as a
provider, then everyone who has built software that consumes the API will be
locked into doing business with a single company or its approved providers. As
software engineers, most of us value the ability to compete and be
interoperable and we recognized APIs becoming protected as enabling a new era
of walled gardens and barriers to creating competing products.

We cheered for Compaq when they reverse engineered the IBM PC and started
selling computers that could run software built for the IBM. We cheered Linux
when it created a free alternative to the proprietary Unix interface. We
cheered WINE when it made Windows APIs available under Linux. This kind of
interoperability gives the rest of us the ability to reuse our own software
without being beholden to the companies that created the original target
platform.

Incidentally, there's a slight distinction in wording around API copyrights. I
don't think there's a doubt that they can be copyrighted. Anything that is
written down, recorded or filmed automatically receives copyright protection.
The interesting question is whether there is a fair use exemption for
interoperability. I think it would be obviously wrong if Google had taken Java
and its APIs, renamed it Gava and then started pushing developers to write
Gava software instead of Java. But they didn't, they just made Java be able to
run on a new class of devices. If all you're doing is helping to ensure that
existing code written by other developers can work with your product, that's a
benefit for those developers too as well as the end users that buy and run the
software.

~~~
jhanschoo
Regarding the point in the first paragraph: In that case, that is a
legislative issue. A judiciary is not empowered to be lenient in their
judgment on copyright infringement because of compatibility and lock-in.

~~~
gpm
Case law strongly disagrees with you on this point.

Most relevant to this case is the merger doctrine. Ideas that can be expressed
in only a small number of ways are not copyrightable.

Even more on point to your comment is the concept of copyright misuse. If you
try to use your copyright (a government granted temporary monopoly on the
reproduction of your work) to gain monopolies on other things you can not only
lose the infringement case but in extreme cases even lose the copyright
entirely.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine)

~~~
jhanschoo
> Most relevant to this case is the merger doctrine. Ideas that can be
> expressed in only a small number of ways are not copyrightable.

The CC's opinion is of interest here:

> We further find that the district court erred in focusing its merger
> analysis on the options available to Google at the time of copying. It is
> well-established that copyrightability and the scope of protectable activity
> are to be evaluated at the time of creation, not at the time of
> infringement. See Apple Computer, Inc. v. Formula Int'l, Inc., 725 F.2d 521,
> 524 (9th Cir.1984) (quoting National Commission on New Technological Uses of
> Copyrighted Works, Final Report at 21 (1979) ("CONTU Report") (recognizing
> that the Copyright Act was designed "to protect all works of authorship from
> the moment of their fixation in any tangible medium of expression")). The
> focus is, therefore, on the options that were available to Sun/Oracle at the
> time it created the API packages. Of course, once Sun/Oracle created
> "java.lang.Math.max," programmers who want to use that particular package
> have to call it by that name. But, as the court acknowledged, nothing
> prevented Google from writing its own declaring code, along with its own
> implementing code, to achieve the same result. In such circumstances, the
> chosen expression simply does not merge with the idea being expressed.[7]

> copyright misuse

Inoperability with customers who have decided to use a service or product or
lock-in due to said inoperability itself does not necessarily make the
provider of the original service a monopoly.

Interoperability arguments have relevance in fair-use, but the courts have yet
to determine if Google has a right to the APIs under fair use. Google and
others may be entitled to the APIs under fair use, but the CC has determined
that the SSO of APIs are copyrightable.

And fair use is yet another can of uncertainty, since usurpation of market
share counts negatively to one's case for fair use.

====

In the case of APIs, a competing service can create a functionally identical
competing API, but differently structured and organized and named, and then
provide a competitor2us.sh script to help their customers migrate.

~~~
gpm
Note that copyright misuse is a separate doctrine from fair use, and unlike
fair use it is not effected by any usurpation of market share.

That said, I think fair use is more likely to apply than copyright misuse in
this case. I just brought it up as one way that the judiciary is empowered to
be lenient in their judgment on copyright infringement because of
compatibility and lock-in.

------
jfasi
I hate to say it, but I’m not optimistic about Google’s case here. From a
purely technical point of view, APIs being free to reuse is an awesome thing
that makes for a more vibrant and competitive software ecosystem.

At the same time, Oracle’s characterization of their API as “original
software” is not entirely off base, as anyone who has spent time and energy
creating and API would know. The amount of design and work required to create
an elegant and useful API is huge, and while it would irreparably harm
software as a field to call it copyrightable, calling it anything other than
an “original” work is a weak position.

Personally, I’m dreading the outcome of this case.

~~~
danShumway
We have precedent that game mechanics can't be copyrighted -- they get
classified as "inventions" and have to be patented instead.

Obviously IANAL, but to me as a game designer, mechanics aren't any less
creative work than narrative. In fact, I'm spending more of my creative energy
on mechanics than I am on story. So the lines to me just seem incredibly
arbitrary, or at least I don't understand the legal differences well enough to
figure out intuitively where they lie. I am incredibly grateful that game
mechanics can't be copyrighted, but game mechanics don't feel like inventions
to me. A game mechanic is how I express an idea.

I tried to make a prediction about which way this would go, and I genuinely
don't know -- not even that my prediction is uncertain, I don't feel like I
know enough to even make a prediction at all.

It does make me nervous. I think it's important that the Supreme Court hear
it, and I'm glad they agreed to, but it would be utterly disastrous if this
got decided in Oracle's favor. My (perhaps incorrect) impression is that the
Supreme Court is not particularly fond of the 9th, and have something of a
history of slapping down attempts at copyright expansion. A ruling _against_
Oracle would be fantastic, and would maybe even open the door for talking
about blocking copyright on grounds of compatibility.

I guess I'm just nervous because it feels like the stakes are really high.

At this point, there's nothing really that people like me can do, right? It's
just up to Oracle and Google's lawyers?

~~~
ShroudedNight
> the Supreme Court is not particularly fond of the 9th

I thought the 9th wasn't involved here, and that the appellate ruling
originated from the federal circuit?

~~~
jcranmer
You're right, this is CAFC, where all patent matters end up (the case
originally involved a patent dispute, but that was dropped very early).

SCOTUS has not looked kindly on CAFC when it comes to patents, almost always
overturning CAFC's decisions as being utter lunacy. I hope that same
skepticism will transfer to copyright.

------
crazygringo
It's ridiculous this is being decided by the courts instead of legislatively.

Fair use doctrine was obviously never intended to apply to reimplementing
API's either way because it didn't exist yet.

Rather than have a court make up some kind of ultimately arbitrary precedent
ruling either way, Congress should be debating the ramifications of whether
reimplementing API's is explicitly fair use or not, considering both pros and
cons to the economy, with opportunity for all tech companies to weigh in --
and then pass a good law.

Courts interpret law, they aren't supposed to make it, and the Supreme Court
_certainly_ isn't even remotely qualified to determine what's the best policy
for a healthy dynamic tech economy here. The law is so ambiguous here that
Congress is shirking its duties by not establishing relevant law here.

~~~
skybrian
This isn't at all unusual. You might have been taught in school about the
courts "interpreting" the law, but a lot of American law was inherited from
English common law which does basically come from court decisions, and a lot
was created by court decisions since then.

In times like these where Congress is often deadlocked, _someone_ needs to
make decisions. Congress can pass a new law if they can get their act
together.

------
gpm
Notes on scheduling for anyone who wants to follow along:

Google now has 45 days to file a brief on the merits that explains their
position.

Once that is filed, Oracle has 30 days to file a brief on the merits that
explains their position.

Google then has 30 more days to file a reply to Oracle's brief. That brings us
to the 28th of February, assuming everyone uses all their time (and no more).

The court can extend all those deadlines.

Once all the briefs have been filed the case will (probably) be scheduled for
oral argument. It looks like oral argument is usually scheduled several months
out, and the last day for oral argument this term is April 29. It might meet
that deadline, otherwise it will be pushed to next October. If the oral
argument is heard this term then we can expect a ruling by the time the court
goes into recess for the year (end of june).

Of course a ruling doesn't mean the case is over, it may well then return to
lower courts for more argument. (It almost certainly will for various details,
like attorney's fees and/or damages).

This case started August 13, 2010. It's been almost a decade. Something is
very wrong with how our court system functions.

~~~
kijin
A decade is obviously too long, but there is some value in taking a long time
to decide important matters. If you rush everything in a short time span, you
risk getting carried away by the public opinion and political environment of
the moment. This can be especially problematic when it comes to the kind of
deep constitutional issues that we expect the Supreme Court to grapple with;
the court needs to keep a certain distance from the propaganda du jour.
Besides, it's not uncommon for people on the death row to dig up evidence that
exonerates them many years after the case was deemed closed. If we sped up the
whole legal system and carried out sentences asap, they might not have been
given enough time to do so.

Meanwhile, the system can be surprisingly agile if it needs to be. _New York
Times Co. v. United states_ only took 12 days from the first hearing to the
Supreme Court ruling! Of course that was because Nixon wanted to rush the
case, but in the end he lost hard and the heat of public opinion probably
didn't help, either. In the case of _Google v. Oracle_ , nobody seems to be
particularly in a hurry. Both sides can afford to drag out the dispute as long
as they want to.

~~~
gpm
I mean, it's a fair point that the schedule of this case doesn't matter that
much. But cases of nearly every sort take too long.

To be honest I mostly included that line out of frustration with a Canadian
Supreme Court ruling today, that said having a juvenile trial go on for 18
months can be "sufficiently speedy". Which is definitely off topic here, but
still one I consider important.

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-youth-
justice...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/supreme-court-youth-
justice-1.5359939)

~~~
kijin
I agree that it's ridiculous to drag a kid through the legal system for 18
months. Ideally, criminal cases involving minors (and individuals in general)
need to be fast-tracked, and there should be a strict limit (measured in
weeks, not months) on how long prosecutors can take to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that somebody committed a crime. If they can't prove it
before the timeout, the defendant goes free. This should also reduce the
incentive to stack one frivolous charge upon another for psychological effect.
Aaron Swartz committed suicide just over two years after he was first
arrested. He never faced an actual trial during those two years, only an
endless series of indictments with minor changes.

But as I said, this is a double-edged sword. People need time to collect
evidence and arrange witness testimonies, so insisting on a quick resolution
could create bias in favor of those who can pay for a lot of lawyer-hours up
front.

------
narrator
I think one could make a good analogy to Baker v. Selden[1], a case from the
1900s about the copyrightability of blank accounting forms, in that APIs are
the modern day equivalent of blank forms that are filled out and submitted to
a computer.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden)

------
gorgoiler
Thinking from first principles, and forgive me for going into hippie
philosophical mode here but I can’t see how an API can have copyright that is
owned.

Creating an API is of course a creative process. Getting the API right is, for
me, the most creative part of programming. When well written, it describes to
a human how the software truly works, with the implementation really being the
computer version of what the function name is already telling you. A browser
rendering engineer could be defined just as much by the model that the DOM API
describes as it is defined by the actual source code. They both describe the
outside and inside of the same thing, a system which, when it’s interface is
shared, is shared between us all and not just under the sole ownership of the
first person to describe it.

It’s hard to see an API therefore, particularly a published one, as a
traditional piece of intellectual property that can be subject to copyright.
One cannot copyright F=ma or e=mc^2. Once these object models about software
are discovered they are like descriptions of the natural world and their
formulae are open and shared for all to use.

Yes: how you build your specific machine that makes use of and conforms to the
API — the actual source code for function implementations — can be your
_intellectual property_ , but the underlying description of the natural world
and its API are discoveries that are part of the commons, for all to interact
with, use, and re-use.

The only difference between natural laws, in my analogy to physics, and
software APIs is that there is only one physical world with a limited set of
natural laws that describe it. With software engineering we create our own new
universes everyday, but they are common universes for us all to share.

~~~
m1sta_
It needs to be its own unique class of IP. The intersection between industrial
design, spare parts, and patents deal with some similar issues.

~~~
gorgoiler
You can’t copyright an invention, as another commenter here has said.

~~~
m1sta_
I don't think you understand my comment.

------
byuu
> "We are confident the Supreme Court will ... reject Google’s continuing
> efforts to avoid responsibility for copying Oracle’s innovations."

Serious question: which part of Oracle buying Java from Sun was innovative?

~~~
Spivak
I feel like that’s being super rude to the devs at Oracle that have been
constantly innovating and improving the language. Java has changed a lot in
the last 9 years.

Oracle’s upcoming design of continuations I think is genuinely novel and will
inspire a lot of other languages’ implementations.

~~~
byuu
Sorry if it wasn't phrased well, but that's what I was meaning by it being a
serious question: does this lawsuit cover code written by Oracle engineers?
It's my understanding the lawsuit was based on code developed by Sun, given
they announced the lawsuit almost immediately after acquiring them in 2010, so
it seems disingenuous to claim this is about their innovations, rather than
Sun's. It feels equally rude to those Sun engineers to act as if Java in 2010
was their innovation. Buying something makes it your property, but not your
creation. Whatever Oracle contributed after the acquisition, certainly would
count as their innovations, but that was not the original basis for this
lawsuit.

------
AnimalMuppet
Good. In my view, the existing ruling desperately needs to be overturned.

And I'm cautiously optimistic. The Supreme Court has shown itself to be far
more sane on IP than the Federal Circuit.

~~~
NotMelNoGuitars
If you don't mind expanding, interested to hear why you believe the current
ruling should be overturned.

~~~
jcranmer
The current holding that APIs are copyrightable, and reimplementing them for
interoperability is not fair use.

This is in direct contrast to decades of consensus that APIs are not
copyrightable, and furthermore, there is a particular procedure to go through
[clean room technique, which Google did] to ensure that the API is
reimplemented without infringing any copyright.

Letting this ruling stand would mean that nearly every piece of software you
use infringed someone's copyright.

~~~
NotMelNoGuitars
Ah, gotcha - so the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit* decided in favor
of Oracle in this case. Thanks for taking the time to type that out, I've been
living under a bit of a rock it seems!

*corrected from "second district court"

~~~
monocasa
The CAFC, not the second district.

------
gojomo
~grellas's comment on sibling story that didn't win the upvote-to-front-page
tournament:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334)

------
m463
I think APIs open for interoperability is better for society.

As an example, the Z80 and the 8080 were interoperable and it was better for
everyone.

~~~
meddlepal
What's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution which
is what the SCOTUS will judge this on.

~~~
magicalist
> _What 's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution
> which is what the SCOTUS will judge this on._

The Constitution only says

> _The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and
> useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
> exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries._

most of copyright is defined in statute (the various copyright acts) and court
precedent.

~~~
wtallis
Yeah, the Copyright Clause is pretty unusual. More than literally anything
else in the Constitution, copyrights and patents _actually are_ supposed to be
judged in light of what's better for society.

Most stuff in the Constitution gives the government the power to do X
(sometimes stating explicitly that it's for reason Y). The structure of the
copyright clause is that Congress has the power to do Y, using mechanism X — a
strict reading of that means that the government cannot do X for reasons other
than Y, and cannot pursue Y using means other than X, and definitely shouldn't
do X for reasons of not-Y.

------
jhanschoo
In the case that Oracle wins solely on Structure, Sequence, and Organization,
I don't see how such a ruling immediately spells doom for competitors trying
to interoperate.

Competitors can still publish a functionally identical but differently
organized API, then provide a competitor2us.sh script to statically change
references to their own API. Sure, the friction is higher, but not
unreasonable.

~~~
alok-g
Wow. This makes sense.

------
Skgqie1
Assuming Oracle wins, what would be necessary to differentiate an
implementation from their owned interfaces? For example, would a method named
FuckOracle_min be different enough to not run afoul - or is it the plain text
description of the API that covers what does / doesn't constitute
infringement?

------
dezren39
please dear god just copy paste alsup's ruling. either his first saying you
can't copyright it, or his second that clean room interface is fair use.

------
nyxtom
And just when you thought naming was difficult enough

------
kchoudhu
Super pumped to see the fate of modern computing decided by a bunch
octogenarians who think "the blue E" is the internet.

------
martin1975
I'm just hoping the judges see this for what it really is - Oracle's unabashed
greed. Google's pales in comparison.

~~~
anon1m0us
Google is not greedy? Oracle paid money for Sun and the property Sun owned at
the time. Google said, nope, we'll just copy that property for ourselves and
keep our money. That seems greedier.

~~~
monocasa
Sun bought and continued development of OpenOffice to avoid paying MS Office
licence fees.

Not wanting to pay licensing fees, and therefore writing your own
interoperable clean room reimplementation is both legal and moral.

------
drallison
If the future of computer programming is important to you, read the briefing
calling for cert in this case. A timeline and references can be found at
[http://www.project-disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/](http://www.project-
disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/) .

For a programmer, the weight of the evidence against copyright for APIs is
conclusive as presented in the briefing. Unfortunately, there are no
programmers on the Supreme Court; while Judge Alsop did learn Java Programming
so he could understand the issues,the Circuit Judges who reviewed Alsop's
decision were not so dedicated.

------
tehjoker
This case clearly shows how taking something from the public and making is
private is essentially a greedy and harmful activity. Unfortunately, our
economy is based on this idea.... it doesn't have to be though.

~~~
anon1m0us
They didn't take it from the public any more than Led Zeppelin took their
songs from the public when they sued those who violated their IP rights.

Software has a real and tangible value. Songs ... well, you decide their
value, but I don't understand why the value songs create should be
protectable, but software not.

That's really what this is about. This is about granting to those who write
software the same rights to that property as anyone else who has rights to
what _they_ write.

~~~
tehjoker
We make things protectable so that private entities can cordon them off from
the public so that they can make money from them by selling copies. If we had
a different funding arrangement for the arts, such things would certainly be
unnecessary. In this case, we can clearly see that privatizing APIs gains the
public nothing and Oracle and co. lots of things.

~~~
anon1m0us
You are a private entity. You can write software. If you do, you should have
the same rights as Oracle does on software it owns. Corporations are people
and you are people.

Private entities create things of value and share them with an incentive to
recover their investment, and then some.

If it's possible for anyone, including private entities like Google, to
CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V it into their own use, then there is _negative_
incentive to create that kind of value for the world.

------
jl6
What’s the current status, today, right now, of the copyrightability of APIs?
Does the Federal Circuit decision stand because it hasn’t yet been overruled
or is it not yet in force because it’s being appealed?

------
aurizon
My mechanic says he can not service my car because the nut to open the hood
latch has a copyrighted shape and the owner of the copyright on that shape
advised me not to use my adjustable wrench or he would sue, but I could rent
his crescent wrench each time I want to service may car, or I could keep the
creascent wrench at home and the installed counter on the wrench would talk to
his billing software and he would send an invoice every month...

In 3 words or less, compare and contrast this to the Google-Oracle copyright
fiasco...

------
fmakunbound
Anyone else worried about the technical illiterate deciding this one?

------
trashface
Thinking cynically, could an Oracle win increase demand for programmers?
Companies may need to hire lots of extra programmers to audit what they have,
and possibly rewrite or make trivial and mechanical API changes to avoid
infringement. Sort of like the broken window theory from economics - break ALL
the windows.

I mean, API-copyright plumbing wouldn't be my first choice of work, but might
make for a decent part time remote job while I spent most of my energy on
something else that is actually useful.

------
greatjack613
Was wondering would it be possible to get a petition on change.org started in
googles favor? I think we need the court to understand the ramifcations of
oracles arguements.

No more openjdk, etc.

------
jonathonadler
This is an interesting comparison to Dataflex vs. Powerflex:
[http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html](http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html)
In this case, the use of “copied” reserved words was at the heart of it. I
never understood why reserved words could be protected.

------
jhanschoo
Important note:

The SC has already denied to hear on whether APIs' SSOs are copyrightable,
suggesting that it agrees with the Fed. Cir. opinion that they are.

This hearing is about Google's Fair Use defense.... and I don't expect Google
to win on fair use unless the SC intends to really break new ground on fair
use analyses.

------
didibus
I can't help and wonder though, as much as I think it would be madness for
APIs to be copyrighted, including a language's standard library. Would I just
have more job opportunities as a dev if it was? Since much more work would be
needed to provide alternative solutions to all these?

------
runn1ng
I am mostly surprised this is _still ongoing_... isn’t it going for around 10
years already?

~~~
aiCeivi9
SCO took even longer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes)
. It stops only when one side can no longer pay the lawyers :/.

------
ascotan
If the supreme court rules in favor of Oracle here, you can expect trolls to
start suing small businesses for copyright infringement based off of old
software APIs. I think Americans should be encouraging tech startups not
laying legal minefields for them.

------
pfdietz
One effect of a ruling that APIs cannot be copyrighted would be to make it
more likely they can be subject to patent protection. That's probably better,
but don't be surprised if we see API patents.

------
microcolonel
What amazes me most is that Oracle has been able to find any expert witness
willing to put his name to this frivolous case.

------
fahrixds
true.

------
onyva
When this started Oracle was the evil one. Now we have your run of the mill
predatory capitalism vs a particularly nasty and dangerous form of
surveillance capitalism, which makes oracle look harmless.

------
redm
I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but Google created this
problem because they didn't want to pay Oracle for commercial use of Java.

This isn't always a problem. When Compaq did the same thing to create the
first IBM compatible PC's, they did so very carefully, ensuring there was no
one working on the team with prior knowledge.

I don't believe Google did the same thing and that's where my problem is. If
they can look through Oracle's code, and just re-write it slightly to do the
same thing to avoid commercial licensing, that doesn't help Open Source, it
hurts it.

------
anon1m0us
It is property law and the ability to protect one's rights to property that
has granted the creators of property a return on their investment of resources
into property.

If creators of property cannot protect their property, there will be less
return on that property and thus, less incentive to create it.

Oracle bought Sun, and with that purchase, the ownership of intellectual
property in the form of the Java API. Google then proceeded to copy that
property into their own property without abiding by the usage restrictions
Oracle, the property owner, specified. That was theft of Oracle's property.

If the Supreme Court does not uphold protections of property, I believe, we
will see less investment in such property.

I am not sure if that is good or bad for the future of the world, but I do
believe had Sun not had property rights to Java, they wouldn't have created
it.

~~~
erikpukinskis
What property has Google destroyed that Oracle is trying to protect?

Owning a property doesn’t give you the right to sue other people who develop a
property that offers the same services.

~~~
anon1m0us
No one said they destroyed it. Google appropriated Oracle's intellectual
property for Google's own use, specifically because Google didn't want to pay
for the use of that intellectual property.

If I write a book and you read it, love it, and then retype the book, print it
and sell it, you have violated my property rights.

You and many others here don't want it to be that way, but it is exactly that
way.

~~~
umvi
If you write a book and I only copy the title and chapter names, but fill in
my own story, did I violate your property rights?

~~~
gpm
This is a bad analogy. You don't need to copy title and chapter names to allow
other people to "interoperate" (read, scan, and index I guess?) with the book.
Moreover substantial creativity goes into title and chapter names. Both of
which imply they should be substantially more copyrightable than APIs.

~~~
wtallis
> This is a bad analogy. You don't need to copy title and chapter names to
> allow other people to "interoperate" (read, scan, and index I guess?) with
> the book.

Bad analogies are inevitable, and aren't the commenter's fault. It's the
Federal Circuit's fault, for trying to blur the lines between functional
matters (the domain of patents) and copyright matters. Any analogy that's
simple enough to quickly understand will suffer from basically this same flaw,
or else not apply to this case.

~~~
anon1m0us
Software is both patentable and copyrightable, so there's no blurry line here.
You are trying to say it's blurry, but it's quite clear.

~~~
wtallis
Oracle's trying to get copyright duration on the exclusive rights to something
that falls under patent subject matter, so yeah, they're blurring the lines.

Ultimately, the problem for Oracle is that the APIs are too functional to be
eligible for copyright protection, too abstract to be eligible for patent
protection, and too generic to be eligible for trademark protection. But that
doesn't stop them from trying to get the best features from all the above.

