
RedHat urges US Supreme Court to support unrestricted use of software interfaces - jrepinc
https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-urges-us-supreme-court-support-unrestricted-use-software-interfaces
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jwildeboer
Dear mods, we are called Red Hat. Two words. Not Redhat or RedHat or redhat.
Thx. A Red Hatter.

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theandrewbailey
"Red Hat urges US Supreme Court to support unrestricted use of software
interfaces" is 81 characters long, so it won't be accepted as an HN title.

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boublepop
Good point, so it makes perfect sense to shorten it to “Red Hat urges US
SupremeCourt to support unrestricted use of software interfaces” to stay
inside 80 characters.

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CameronNemo
SCOTUS would make more sense. u2691.

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godzillabrennus
Microsoft backing this same stance plus Google is likely to tip the scale.
Good to see redhat/IBM trying to do their part,

If they lose the world loses.

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anoncake
Is this really how courts work in the US? Does the Supreme Court effectively
rule based on companies voting rather than the law as it is?

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CivBase
Definitely not. Companies may lobby or argue on their behalf, but the Supreme
Court justices are solely responsible for interpreting the law and ruling on
the case.

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justinclift
As a nit picking data point, "RedHat" in the title should be "Red Hat". ;)

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theandrewbailey
The title is already 80 characters long as it is. Any longer and HN wouldn't
accept it.

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teruakohatu
When is the Court likely to issue a ruling?

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jka
I'm not super familiar with US court proceedings, but from the docket[0] for
the case, it looks like the court is accepting briefs (like this one by
RedHat) until Feb 12th -- so I'd imagine the earliest next steps would be
after that.

The docket also links to the full supporting argument provided by RedHat (and
others).

[0] -
[https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...](https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-956.html)

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illys
The referred law:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102)

Software interfaces look to me like a "method of operation", only the
implementation (the lines of code to run the interface) is subject to
copyright.

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theshadowknows
I have a fairly limited understanding of copyright laws but if this stands
won’t it open the courts up to even more frivolous copyright trolls?

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colejohnson66
Heck, Amazon could sue Oracle for them copying AWS’ interfaces. And IBM could
sue Oracle for their use of SQL. That’d be some schadenfreude.

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nailer
Red Hat was a great corporate citizen before Google adopted "don't be evil"
officially and remains a good corporate citizen after Google abandoned it.

