
EU’s top court: APIs can’t be copyrighted, would “monopolise ideas” - kiyanwang
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/eus-top-court-apis-cant-be-copyrighted-would-monopolise-ideas/
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dTal
Idea monopolies are hardly new; they're called patents.

I'm gonna say that if software counts as technology that can be patented, then
patents on APIs are equally valid. It takes effort to design a good API, just
as it takes effort to write good software.

Of course the whole notion is a terrible idea and should be scrapped.

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AnimalMuppet
But effort doesn't decide whether something is patentable. It needs (at least
in theory) to be _non-obvious_. An API is a _lot_ of work, well designed,
but... non-obvious? I don't buy it.

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esbranson
Isn't "takes effort" opposite "obvious"?

~~~
AnimalMuppet
No. Almost all of my programming takes effort, but most of it is obvious.
(Some of it is obvious after a week's thought. But even then, there's usually
nothing novel at the end of the week - just an architecture that thousands of
people could have come up with. That's not patentable.)

As an illustration, any patented algorithm may take a fair amount of effort to
implement. That doesn't mean that implementing it gives me a new patent,
though.

Or say I write a novel. It takes a lot of work. I can copyright the novel, but
not patent it, no matter how much work it took.

"Takes effort" does _not_ equal "non-obvious".

------
theandrewbailey
(2012)

