Software Copyright and Innovation After Oracle v Google

"The software industry, and indeed every industry that relies on software, has thrived for decades without the encumbrances of proprietary claims over APIs. Because the Federal Circuit's decision destroys the balance between copyrightable expression and uncopyrightable ideas in software, it threatens competition and innovation. The Ninth Circuit should repudiate it at the earliest opportunity."

BAM!

When presenting this to someone, is it helpful to use a human language analogy? For example: In english, when you refer to a "car", you are talking about a machine that moves people on roads. Whereas when you refer to a "boat", you are talking about something that floats on water. What Oracle wants Google to do, is to make up a new name for "car" and "boat", and try to get all developers to adopt these new definitions when using Google's products.

That doesn't sound very clear to me. I think a better analogy would be: Google and Oracle both made cars. Google put the gear shift in the same location as Oracle.

It's also interesting to read the counterpoint arguments of Florian Mueller on his FOSS patents blog.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2014/01/api-copyrightability-to-b...

The crucial point being that code written for Dalvik is actually not compatible with Java runtime. So how can you argue that borrowing code without consent is good for interoperability... when the product you deliver just break it?

> I think this needs to be changed. I can't think of any good reason why in a case like this, where it has both patent and copyright claims, that the appeals need to go to the same court.

Economy of justice concerns are the biggest reason, though there are other reasons to keep the case together (e.g., because it is one case between the same parties and different issues will rely on intersecting sets of determinations, so splitting it by the domain of the ultimate issues will open up the possibility of conflicting rulings on the same intermediate issues, which is not only ugly in and of itself, but especially ugly if the various parts of the split case are both appealed from the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court.)

> Why not have the copyright issues appealed to the Ninth Circuit and the patent issues appealed to the CAFC?

I know the theory but has practice actually born out the supposed benefits of the CAFC as the single Court of Appeals for patent cases? Why not just send the whole thing to the Circuit Courts whether or not there are patent issues?

> At trial court it makes sense to join issues that would normally be heard in separate courts together when they involve the same underlying facts, because there will be a lot of overlap in witnesses and evidence, and a trial court is both a trier of fact and a trier of law. Holding separate trials in different courts would be wasteful, annoying, and could get complicated and troubling if different courts found different facts.

You really get all the same issues with splitting questions of law, since the ultimate legal decision on a patent question may depend on legal decisions on evidentiary and other questions also raised on appeal, on which ultimate non-patent counts in the same case may also rely. A clean separation is not realistic.

> The appeals court does not determine facts.

Yes, it does, though the standard of review for fact questions is usually one of "clear error".