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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

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Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#271

Post by jandrese »

ABCLAW wrote: post #175

It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that i…

If API are copyrightable how do clean room implementations work? It seems IBM could sue the clone makers for the BIOS API if that's the case.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#272

Post by pjmlp »

Justsignedup wrote: post #96
todd3834 wrote: post #5

I’m not sure if I have the timeline correct but I thought Java was owned by Sun Microsystems at the time when they made these decisions. I’m sure they rightly assumed Sun Microsystems would never do this. It is sad to see what Oracle is doing with Sun Microsystem’s creation.

The following is the fun history: - Java is created / owned by Sun. - Sun was fearful of MS's EEE approach (embrace, extend, exterminate) where MS took a thing, built their own, pushed their own tooling, added their own proprietary instruction, boom windows lock-in. So Sun basically made their contract: Java is free but only if you DO NOT introduce any new instructions, and implement a 100% compatible VM, nothing add…

Sun wasn't happy at all, see Gosling interviews.

They just didn't had enough money to sue and decided to make juice out of lemons.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#273

Post by ghayes »

EGreg wrote: post #225
monocasa wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The court has made the point now that literally just the class and method names are subject to copyright.

I thought Google used the implementations!

I thought one of the main issues was that there was only one natural implementation of many API functions. Like when you assign students a coding question, you will see many answers come back identical even though no one cheated.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#274

Post by maire »

ABCLAW wrote: post #175

It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that i…

RE> Nature of the Copyrighted Work: Dealt with previously

In my entire career you could not copyright an API. There is good reason for this. If you wanted to do business with certain entities, the implementation had to be multisource. The new implementation had to come from a cleanroom, but in this case it came from open source (which seems equivalent). Therefore you have one judge making one decision that is an anomaly. It seems to me that a single judge should not be making a landmark decision.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#275

Post by hcknwscommenter »

lmm wrote: post #110
redm wrote: post #28

I think the part that gets lost in all of this is that Sun offered to license Java to Google previously for $100M. [1] Google turned that down and bypassed Sun because they didn't want to pay (or license). At the time, Sun was happy to see Java being used by Google, even without the license. Still, Google knew exactly what they were doing. [2] My point is, they did this to themselves and they knew what they were poss…

Google believed they could implement their own VM and get something cheaper (and/or better) than they would get by licensing one from Sun. That seems like a perfectly legitimate business decision for them to make. A clean-room reimplementation of an existing API had long been thought to be legally clear, going all the way back to Compaq reimplementing the IBM BIOS and starting the "IBM-compatible" competitive ecosyst…

Google did not do a clean-room reimplementation. They copied. This is not disputed by Google.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#276

Post by murukesh_s »

treis wrote: post #146
baldfat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reverse engineering That is certainly an issue if you reverse engineer anything. Google went out of their way to NOT reverse engineer it. The issue is can a public API be copyrighted. That is the scary issue.

I don't get why it's a scary issue or even controversial why an API would be subject copyright. An API, in my mind, is similar to design drawings or blueprints. Independently figuring out how to implement those drawings doesn't change the fact that you copied the design.

Can you copyright the architecture of a building? Like can you copyright the opera house so that no one else can build something similar or a copy?

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#277

Post by jasonlotito »

treis wrote: post #146
baldfat wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> reverse engineering That is certainly an issue if you reverse engineer anything. Google went out of their way to NOT reverse engineer it. The issue is can a public API be copyrighted. That is the scary issue.

I don't get why it's a scary issue or even controversial why an API would be subject copyright. An API, in my mind, is similar to design drawings or blueprints. Independently figuring out how to implement those drawings doesn't change the fact that you copied the design.

It's scary because let's say you are competing with someone, so you decide to copy their API to make it easy for people to migrate over to your system rather than use their system. Now, instead of just doing that, you have to get a license to use the API. Otherwise, you are a copyright infringer.

Take this as an example: https://docs.us-phoenix-1.oraclecloud.com/Content/Object/Tas...

Here is an example of a potential copyright infringer copying the API for another competing service. I'd hope they acquired a license for it, otherwise.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#280

Post by cat199 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #175

It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that i…

> Dealt with previously - APIs are copyrightable

IANAL, but doesn't this contradict case law elsewhere?

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