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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

#401

Post by phkahler »

ABCLAW wrote: post #391
jandrese wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You actually do a clean room implementation rather than copying chunks of your competitor's work and then pretending it's allowed under fair use? Seems pretty straightforward.

Google did clean room implementation of almost all functions. They copied 9 lines of implementation code verbatim - out of thousands of lines. It does raise a question in my mind as to how that one function got copies, but it's also possible that it was re-implemented and happened to be done exactly the same without looking at the original - I honestly don't know but Google conceded it was a duplicate either way. 9 Lines. Not a wholesale infringement - seems pretty straightforward.

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

#402

Post by MertsA »

ABCLAW wrote: post #391
jandrese wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You actually do a clean room implementation rather than copying chunks of your competitor's work and then pretending it's allowed under fair use? Seems pretty straightforward.

That statement is at odds to APIs being copyrightable. If the API itself can't be used then how exactly is a clean room implementation of that API supposed to avoid the copyright issues of implementing the API?

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

#403

Post by pvelagal »

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…

IMHO, if API's are copywritable, consider the equivalents :

-) Are Networking protocols copywritable ?

-) Are REST APIs copywritable ?

I am not sure if this is the way open source world should work.

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

#404

Post by michaelmrose »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #275
lmm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They copied literally a handful of lines of code that an intern could have written in a few hours.

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

#405

Post by phkahler »

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…

The thing is, any program that calls "SetBrickMode()" HAS to use that name. Nobody has ever claimed programs require the consent of the API creator under copyright law to use the API. EVER prior to this. And then once a bunch of software is created using the API (presumably without need of the copyright holder) someone else doing an alternative implementation for that software to run on has no choice but to use the same naming convention for those programs to run.

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

#406

Post by michaelmrose »

ABCLAW wrote: post #108
kodablah wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure you are familiar with the entire case regarding Sun's public approval of Google's Java use. Oracle argued it was the CEO's personal blog, but the CEO definitely did give a form of "green light" depending upon your interpretation. It's a defense I feel like is easy to do against a large company that "should have known better", but would be considered unfair against a smaller company that was essentially…

I'm familiar with the case. The comment isn't out of context; you (and other posters) need to recognize that IP rights are composite rights, like real estate. In real estate, you can own a plot of land and provide others with permissions associated with the land; maybe they're allowed to walk over a path that runs through your land. That permission is not equivalent to all possible permissions associated with the lan…

To use your own analogy it seems like we are only talking about one singular right. Making derivative work thereof. If not can you clarify your position?

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

#407

Post by deong »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #339
protomyth wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the BIOS API was copyrightable, they would have had to do nothing and simply declare that they owned the copyright to the API and thus no clones. Since they couldn't do that, they had to go to the extra step.

Replying to your comment below. I am not missing your point. I am merely pointing out that your point is incorrect as a matter of law. Copyright does not cover re-implementation. Copyright only covers copying. Your statement that IBM could sue company using a clean-room developed re-implementation of IMB's BIOS if IBM owned a copyright to their BIOS is incorrect as a matter of law.

> Your statement that IBM could sue company using a clean-room developed re-implementation of IMB's BIOS if IBM owned a copyright to their BIOS is incorrect as a matter of law.

To the extent that it's relevant here, that appears to be untrue. This hinges on the fact that with an API, you have to match it exactly, and there's no reasonable way to argue that someone could sit down and do a clean room implementation of the Java APIs that perfectly matched all 3000 classes and all the public interfaces of all those classes.

You can do a clean room implementation of the Java Platform, but you can't do a clean room design of the Java APIs. The whole point you're trying to solve is to make something that's compatible with Java, and that requires knowing the Java APIs, i.e., it's not a clean room. If we extrapolate that back to IBM and clones, as long as the clone makers must come up with the same external API as the IBM BIOS, then this court would say that IBM absolutely could use copyright law to prohibit clones, because the clones would have to have copied the APIs -- not the code, but the names and types used in the APIs themselves, and IBM holds copyright to those names.

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

#408

Post by geofft »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #371
geofft wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the part that gets lost in all of this is that Sun offered to license Java to Google previously for $100M. Google turned that down and bypassed Sun because they didn't want to pay (or license). I'm not sure I follow - Google believed they didn't need a license, just like everyone who used Linux despite SCO offering to license Linux to them. If Google needed a license, and Sun had not offered one, it would n…

There's no provision for compulsory licensing for copyright because it's not supposed to inhibit technical implementations. Patents do that, and it least in the UK the law includes compulsory licensing.

US copyright law doesn't do compulsory licensing for anything other than music recordings, and I believe it doesn't have compulsory patent licensing at all. I'm not sure there's a good rationale for this.

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

#409

Post by michaelmrose »

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.

I don't think J2ME was suitable for googles usage regardless of price. Unsuitable tech is unsuitable if someone pays YOU 100M

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

#410

Post by icebraining »

mtgx wrote: post #320
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…

From the ruling: > The Java API is a collection of “pre-written Java source code programs for common and more advanced computer functions.” I'm not too familiar with Java, but I believe they are mistaking APIs for libraries there. Did Google infringe on the libraries or the actual API? Like did Google actually infringe on what Oracle calls the "Java API" (but is actually a library), and are we all talking past each o…

Did Google infringe on the libraries or the actual API?

Supposedly, both. They made an API with the same structure, names, etc. They also copied a nine-line function called rangeCheck.

Additionally, how would this relate to the Java programming language being "free" and why would Google infringe on anything if it was free?

"Free" is not a legal license. Google would have to start from the OpenJDK implementation, and be subject to its license, which they didn't.

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