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Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

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Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#181

Post by rayiner »

appleflaxen wrote: post #160
grellas wrote: post #120

Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree wit…

People complain about the special interests, but some fail to realize that the major backers of Extreme Copyright (TM) are a special interest that we created. We, the US public, out of the goodness of our hearts and wanting to foster art, gave up our right to "repeat what we heard" (copying, when what you hear is digital) in return for incentives to create art. And then bam ; decades later the incentives are the de f…

> Fewer Oracles. Fewer Microsofts. Fewer Steve Jobs.

Was it so bad back when you could just buy software for money? Before business models built on eyeballs and data mining instead of copyright?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#182

Post by stsp »

mSparks wrote: post #141
solotronics wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? My understanding was that Oracle was suing Google over the use of an API. This seems quite unreasonable to me but that could be due to my tech background and lack of legal knowledge.

While I don't really agree with the OP, I totally understand the sentiment. It's really an acute issue between legal copyright and the new reality of modern computing. It used to be that copyright sustained our industries. Pottery, Pattern designs on fabric, and later music and films. In the modern world however, it seems positively damaging, with the likes of China, with no respect for IP and copyright rocketing ahe…

Additional reading material: http://questioncopyright.org/learn

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#183

Post by serge2k »

rayiner wrote: post #12

These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential…

> They're protectable, but can't be protected in any realistic scenario

I thought that since the court which ruled that APIs are copyrightable wasn't the court which would normally hear the appeal (due ot the patent issue) their ruling doesn't set a precedent?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#184

Post by simcop2387 »

pfg wrote: post #90
blacktulip wrote: post #67

Excuse me here but I have to ask. Is this final? Because I've read that Oracle won the case some time ago.

The district court originally ruled that APIs weren't copyrightable. The appeals court overturned that decision, ruling that APIs were copyrightable, but that it could be fair use. The case went back to the district court for that point, and the jury now decided that it was in fact fair use.

Yep, and that fair use argument is why the SCOTUS declined to hear it at the time. Be interesting to see if it goes back that way or if Oracle decides it's not going to get anything from doing so.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#185

Post by serge2k »

farcical_tinpot wrote: post #84
magicalist wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If API's are copyrightable > And if you're in the camp that believes APIs should not be protected, this precedent--if it stands--means that you'll have to shoulder the expense of going to trial on the fair use issue before winning on the merits. worth remembering that since that decision was made by the Federal Circuit, it has no bearing on the rest of the court system when it comes to copyright. There is no place…

Fair point. I'm reminded why I don't get too familiar with US law in these cases. Starting from "Are APIs copyrightable" all over again? Great......... More legal fees, court time and nonsense.

Just has to happen once though.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#186

Post by Natanael_L »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #87
farcical_tinpot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't even really a case (like say, Samba) where copying was necessary to interoperate with a closed, proprietary system. Samba never copied anything. The interoperability argument was simple. Google wanted to use a language that was familiar to most and where developers could take existing code and port trivially. There are developer tools on the market that have done that for decades. Davlik isn't drop-in compa…

> You can copyright APIs, but you can't tell others how they should be used. What does that mean? What privileges would such a copyright provide? What could I do with the copyright that I couldn't do without?

Wave around a piece of legal paper with your name on it, if you file it with the copyright office.

And that's about it.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#187

Post by Natanael_L »

eganist wrote: post #180
erikpukinskis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would That's not how facts work. You can't say "it is a fact that [hypothetical scenario] leads to [expected outcome]" except in the case of very well understood mechanisms narrowly applied. I don't think the sociopolitical effects of copyright law are one of those situations.

"hypothetical" assumes this has never happened. Copyright and patent laws came into existence because this exact scenario happened all the time. Edit: to counter DannyBee's assertion, I'm referring specifically to this statement -- "it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would certainly work to rob those who may have spent countless hours developing s…

That's not a sufficient answer.

The claim assumes that copyright and patents are proven to be beneficial, measurably better than the prior situation. Are they? If so, how?

Not to mention, is there any proof there's no better solution?

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#188

Post by cheald »

xenihn wrote: post #171
cheald wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.

She's strengthening her personal brand and potentially gaining access to new clients for future work. I have absolutely no problem with her asking for donations, but let's not be disingenuous :)

Agreed, but brand doesn't put food on the table!

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#189

Post by nl »

lmm wrote: post #118
rayiner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point about factor #4. But (in light of dragonwriter's comment below): wasn't Sun making a play at getting JVM into peoples' phones before Android stole their thunder? Or am I misremembering the timing?

JavaME had existed for years. There were a few very good apps (Google Maps was great, as was the Facebook app). Given that even the cheapest phones included it I can't imagine Sun was making any money off it.

It was a major source of licensing revenue for Sun, and one of the main reasons why historically they had been reluctant to open source Java. They were making around $200M revenue from it in 2007, which was the major source of income for their software business.

Re: Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

#190

Post by farcical_tinpot »

dragonwriter wrote: post #167
farcical_tinpot wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is irrelevant. There was a ridiculous notion going around a while back that if Oracle lost then the GPL would become unenforceable. The GPL does not depend on copyrightable APIs, and says nothing about what Oracle is trying to argue. Linking to a library and merely using an API are two different things. The GPL depends on the former and says the latter is neither here nor there.

> The GPL does not depend on copyrightable APIs True in terms of the GPL as such , but the FSFs interpretation that the GPL applies to works that link, even dynamically, to a GPL covered work, which it holds to be derivative works, depends absolutely on the API presented by a library being a copyright-protected element (it also probably can't stand even then without an extremely narrow interpretation of "fair use".)

Where the GPL is concerned the distinction between linking when code has been compiled and the API itself is very clear. Code is copyrightable, but headers and interfaces do not make something else a derivative work. Stallman agrees on this one:

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0301.1/0362.html

The code depends on copyrighted libraries, but, this has nothing to do with whether the method of calling a GPLed code library is itself copyrighted.

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