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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

#421

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cabaalis wrote: post #269

So, for those like me who don't quite understand all the legalese: I've been operating under the belief that APIs and protocol "structures" were ruled as "non-copyright-able" before, while "implementations" absolutely were copyright-able. Was I wrong then, or am I wrong now?

They were considered non-copyrightable before. Then, in a surprise to many, they were ruled copyrightable in this case.

So far, the ruling only applies in the Federal Circuit. And you only get into the Federal Circuit when there is a patent aspect to the case. But a forum-shopping litigant could have a patent claim to the case, drop it part way through, and still wind up in the Federal Circuit on appeal (which, if I understand correctly, is exactly what happened in this case).

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

#422

Post by carussell »

TuringNYC wrote: post #202

Perhaps this is a naive question - but amongst the hundreds of of things Google has invented or has patents on, isn't there something they can find that Oracle has trampled on, and then use it as a negotiation tactic for making this all go away? e.g., If an API can be copyrighted, can a container registry interface also be copyrighted? I agree, this is all stupid, but i'm asking this from the perspective of just find…

Settling out of court at this point would not be a good result, since the most important thing that will come out of this is the legal precedent.

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

#423

Post by icebraining »

servilio wrote: post #290
treis wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't copyright trivial work so the size of the spec matters. It depends on how you create your server. If you go to their website, look at their API, and start typing identical code then that's not ok. It's pretty clearly copying. If you do black box testing and then write your own API that's fine. It's clearly not copying but a new original work.

And what criteria should be used to tell when an API is complex enough to be copyright-able?

Generally, anything can be copyrighted as long as it's sufficiently original. The phrase “I have abandoned my search for truth and am now looking for a good fantasy”, for example, is under copyright by Ashleigh Brilliant, who own a case against a t-shirt manufacturer using it.

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

#424

Post by paulie_a »

admax88q wrote: post #42
gsnedders wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

V8 has little to do with Oracle, fundamentally. V8 came about because they wanted a higher performance JS VM for their browser; the JVM was never in contention there.

Sure it does. Why did they want a higher performance JS VM for the browser? The language of choice to build interactive applications on the web before JS was really viable was Java. A high performance JS VM means we don't need to use applets anymore.

Sorry, but for the web java applets were never viable and universally complete garbage.

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

#425

Post by maire »

ABCLAW wrote: post #378
maire wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi ABCLAW, I read page 17 and it is clearly written by someone that doesn't understand software. My non-lawyer reading of the justification implies that polymorphism violates copyright law - which is an even deeper issue. This would destroy all modern software development. Yikes! I am now even more confused. Even Oracle would disagree with this point of view. In your text, you are now making the argument that Google…

1) Judges aren't computer scientists, and LOTS of IP cases read very poorly as a result. This is a structural issue with how judges are educated within court rooms regarding the facts surrounding the disputes in question - but let's just accept it as an unfortunate cost to adjudicating the way we do. Regarding your polymorphism point, you've got the cause and effect swapped. The LACK of polymorphism was the basis for…

Hi ABCLAW,

I just reread the document, and I think you are referring to page 36. I think Oracle is trying to get around the Sega vs Nintendo case which does protect the API. I believe the Oracle argument is tenuous since you still need to import the Math class to use it. If you don't import it, they you have to specify the Math class every time you use the method. Even if Oracle is correct, then it would mean the Math class is not in the API, it is an implementation detail. Then we are back to the discussion if an open source implementation is legitimate replacement for clean room implementation. Then this becomes an open source discussion and not an API discussion.

The whole Oracle discussion of API seems circular and might be a red herring. The real discussion is at the very end where Oracle says that Google only implemented a subset of the API and not the full API.

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

#426

Post by carussell »

kodablah wrote: post #52
jsjohnst wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t Kotlin be the more logical route?

Doubt it if they still want the JVM. Sure Java the language is gone, but Kotlin on the JVM relies on the very non-Oracle-approved Java stdlib implementations that are at the root of this suit. If you want to argue Kotlin Native + NDK, sure, but it is very young (though I like it and have used it myself).

Today, Google is using the Oracle-approved form. They already switched Android from Harmony to OpenJDK in a previous release.

Since then, this suit has been about (a) deciding whether Google is guilty of wrongdoing in the past, and (b) what the extent of the damages should be for that historical wrongdoing should be, if any.

The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android (except if Google wanted to factor the suit into their decisionmaking for their own reasons).

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

#427

Post by icebraining »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #154
djsumdog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is Google didn't use the Oracle Java engine. They implemented their own runtime environment that's mostly API compatible with Java (and getting further from that as the years go on). This gets into really critical concerns around APIs. If commercial product A sucks and I'm in a shop where we made our own drop in replacement that implement's A's APIs .. then we open source that drop-in replacement and pu…

Considering the pain that has been caused by Google deciding they needed to reinvent Java, and do so in a way that isn't really compatible with the new releases, I would say I'm ok with this.

So you're OK with causing massive problems to anyone trying to provide alternatives to proprietary APIs just to stick it to Google?

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

#428

Post by treis »

MertsA wrote: post #418
treis wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is an API different than any other product specification? Why can't e.g. Panasonic sue other manufacturers for making an 18650 form factor battery cell? Why can't Ford license the form factor that every car uses for a gas nozzle? There's fundamentally not a way to create your own compatible implementation without using the same API.

Panasonic and Ford own copyrights on their CAD drawings for those items. So I can't just CTRL C and CTRL V and send them off to a manufacturer to get my own stuff made. I can, however, measure those things and create my own drawings without violating copyright because I am not reproducing the work.

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

#429

Post by icebraining »

danjoc wrote: post #114
djsumdog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the thing is Google didn't use the Oracle Java engine. They implemented their own runtime environment that's mostly API compatible with Java (and getting further from that as the years go on). This gets into really critical concerns around APIs. If commercial product A sucks and I'm in a shop where we made our own drop in replacement that implement's A's APIs .. then we open source that drop-in replacement and pu…

>are we no violating their copyright just by implementing their API? OpenJDK is GPL. If you comply with GPL, no. This is the problem, Google copied and did not comply with the GPL. Their other option was to pay Oracle/Sun a licensing fee for a commercial license. This is exactly the business model many GPL users follow. Ruling otherwise makes this business model invalid, but it also creates a double standard. Conside…

This is exactly the business model many GPL users follow.

GPL users charge money for a license on the implementation, not on the API. Or do you know any charging a license for the API itself?

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

#430

Post by ABCLAW »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #419
ABCLAW wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Judges aren't computer scientists, and LOTS of IP cases read very poorly as a result. This is a structural issue with how judges are educated within court rooms regarding the facts surrounding the disputes in question - but let's just accept it as an unfortunate cost to adjudicating the way we do. Regarding your polymorphism point, you've got the cause and effect swapped. The LACK of polymorphism was the basis for…

I have just read from page 17 to 33. I expected a load of bullcrap, but ended up with only one nugget, page 31: > We further find that the district court erred in focusing its merger analysis on the options available to Google at the time of copying. It is well-established that copyrightability and the scope of protectable activity are to be evaluated at the time of creation, not at the time of infringement. The erro…

Google specifically decided not to use 'interoperability' as a functional objective constraining their code design because there was a wall of evidence against that interpretation. There's a comprehensive write-up elsewhere in this thread about it.
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