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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

#381

Post by monocasa »

pjmlp wrote: post #351
geodel wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope that little company does not come under pressure to make Android phones.

It is hard to compete against a free beer OS originally developed with tech unlawfully taken from other companies. So one either swims or joins the graveyard of companies that tried to fight it.

> It is hard to compete against a free beer OS

I'd argue that it's next to impossible. OSes are a commodity now. Even Microsoft is coming around to that idea.

> tech unlawfully taken from other companies.

All of the previous caselaw said that this was fine.

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

shmerl wrote: post #187
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure hope so. That decision definitely needs to be appealed. I very much hope it's overturned. (The industry has pretty much assumed - and acted - that APIs were not copyrightable, and that's worked out all right. Suddenly shifting to APIs being copyrightable is going to cause some change the rules under existing activity, in ways that it's hard yet to define the full scope of.) But even if it's not, the decision n…

Didn't White House administration try to interfere with this case, and persuade judges not to declare APIs non copyrightable? That was really weird. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/white-house-side... I wonder what will happen this time.

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by Zigurd »

bitL wrote: post #109
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…

SUN wasn't very happy about Google using Java without paying anything. IIRC SUN wanted Google to use J2ME and get some modest fees; instead Google decided to reimplement API, pissing off all top guys at SUN who publicly were OK with it (hoping they could negotiate some payment), but internally were boiling.

Sun was only incrementally better than Oracle in their approach to Java licensing. They already has one pyrrhic victory over Microsoft that birthed C#, .NET, and Microsoft's own VM. Failing to come to terms with Google means client Java runs on Android, and not even on a Java VM. Way to make your language technology relevant.

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

#384

Post by treis »

protomyth wrote: post #336
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is simply incorrect. Copyright covers copying. It does not cover independent re-implementation. That is the point of clean-room re-implementation. It is not copying because--> clean room. Silly Example: you design a phone book containing all the names and phone numbers of everyone in the city. To the extent that any subjective decisions were made in the design, it is a copyrighted work. I design a phone book. If…

No, you are not getting the point of the whole "copyright the API" thing this discussion is talking about. If I can copyright the API then it doesn't matter if you clean room or not since the API is copyright and I can sue the heck out of you no matter how you did your work. That is my point that you are missing. IBM didn't believe they could copyright the API so they took some additional measures. If they thought th…

Actually, you're not getting it. Copyright means I can't copy your work. If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright.

If I take your picture of a building and copy that's a copyright violation.

If I take a picture of a building from the exact same angle you did, that's not a copyright violation.

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

#385

Post by treis »

foota wrote: post #343
treis wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 1% will be things like String.methodNoOneUses or ObscureClass. Even if they aren't identical they will be close enough for 99.999% of the programs people write.

How do you propose they do this black box testing?

Write code, run it through the compiler and create specifications based on what you observe.

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

#386

Post by DannyBee »

grellas wrote: post #355

Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact". There is a reason for this: if it were the rule that an appellate court could easily step in and second-guess how a jury weighs evidence, there would be little room for finality with jury verdicts because lawyers are very skilled (and become very tiresome) endles…

"In this case, the Federal Circuit Court did what amounted a wholesale second-guessing of what the jury concluded about the facts here."

It's worse than that. They are supposed to be applying ninth circuit law, and they roundly haven't throughout the entire appeals.

They've made a complete mess of it. First in copyrightability, and now fair use. There are even ninth circuit judges who have spoken out about this.

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

#387

Post by [deleted] »

grellas wrote: post #355

Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact". There is a reason for this: if it were the rule that an appellate court could easily step in and second-guess how a jury weighs evidence, there would be little room for finality with jury verdicts because lawyers are very skilled (and become very tiresome) endles…

[deleted]

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

#388

Post by phkahler »

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.

Bzzt. You really need to make a citation for that statement. Without it there is no point in considering your other 3. The case law around that issue is exactly Oracle vs Google.

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

#389

Post by ABCLAW »

jerf wrote: post #309
mlindner wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? No those are the same thing. Why is an API suddenly not copyrightable if its 0x51234 offset 5 bits, vs human readable text? That is nonsense. Numbers and words should not be treated differently. What if I named my function 015342342(String 123949)? How does that change anything?

Copyright has a creativity requirement. I can easily see a court ruling that 0x51234 bit 5 is not creative whereas SetBrickMode(true) has a spark of creativity in that it could have been named multiple things. Without endorsement, there is definitely a line between text in which one can be "creative" and numbers in copyright law as written. The problem here isn't the line between creative and non-creative, the proble…

This line of 'concern' has been running through the courts since the mid 80s. This isn't anything new. The cases themselves discuss the jurisprudence on either side, as well as the tests used to determine the magnitude of creativity and similarity as between software products.

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

#390

Post by s73v3r_ »

simias wrote: post #227
s73v3r_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, and this is the big but, they did it in such a way as not to be compatible with the Oracle one.

I'm not sure how that's relevant, if anything since the crux of the issue seems to be the "stealing" of the API the fact that there are incompatibilities should be in Google's favour? It's a bit odd to claim that somebody stole your API while at the same time complaining that they did not steal it well enough.

"I'm not sure how that's relevant"

The original license for Java said you can create your own implementation just fine, so long as it was compatible with the others (or at least the benchmark one). By not doing that, Google violated the license.

"It's a bit odd to claim that somebody stole your API while at the same time complaining that they did not steal it well enough."

Not if what you want to avoid is people Embracing your API, Extending it with new special bits, and Extinguishing your version.

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