The fact that the justices assigned homework consisting of writing an essay on how the Seventh Amendment might come to bear on this case indicates to me two things:
1) They're pissed.
2) They are somewhat likely to favor Google, and to make a very narrow ruling affirming the district-court jury decision.
The SCOTUS is usually loath to set things broadly in stone. But if you bring a case where an appeals court wantonly overturned a jury's finding of fact, before a panel of justices considered to be such experts on the Constitution that they are appointed to the final authority for its interpretation... expect the CAFC to get a sound thrashing for what it has done.
It seems likely that the GPL will fall if that's the case.
>In this particular case, the court’s interest in the matter might stem from an amicus brief filed by a group of civil procedure, intellectual property and legal history professors, who argue that the history of the Seventh Amendment in this context compels recognition of the jury as having broad authority in assessing the fairness of any particular use.
That's not arguing that the API isn't copyrightable. That's arguing it is fair use to take GPL code and change the license. If Google wins on that, the foundation of 35 years of free software is utterly destroyed.
And if Oracle wins on interfaces being copyrightable, then software industry will probably go down the toilet, mired in a disaster of copyright disputes.
Now you need a license to interact with something?
Do all PCs need a license from IBM now for having IBM-PC-compatible features?
Is Wine possible? Is a VM possible?
Does the SCO lawsuit return now that Linux implementing unix APIs?
GPL software goes out the window as well, as you now cannot interface with GPL software without implementing the copyrighted interfaces.
>And if Oracle wins on interfaces being copyrightable
They already did. Fair use is an argument made #after# copyright infringement occurs. Winning on fair use means API is copyrightable.
The jury decided that it is fair use to take someone else's code and change the license on it. The Federal Circuit overturned the jury as a matter of law. The law doesn't say you can do that as part of fair use. The power to make law belongs to the legislature, not the judicial.
1) They're pissed.
2) They are somewhat likely to favor Google, and to make a very narrow ruling affirming the district-court jury decision.
The SCOTUS is usually loath to set things broadly in stone. But if you bring a case where an appeals court wantonly overturned a jury's finding of fact, before a panel of justices considered to be such experts on the Constitution that they are appointed to the final authority for its interpretation... expect the CAFC to get a sound thrashing for what it has done.