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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

#471

Post by hcknwscommenter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #468
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because? You want the world to work that way? Well, it doesn't. APIs are copyrightable.

APIs are copyrightable under a CAFC decision notionally applying 9th Circuit law in this case which the Supreme Court declined to review because, pending the resolution of other issues, they viewed it as not ripe for review. Since this is not within the CAFCs special subject-matter domain (patents or any of the other areas which bring a case within it's jurisdiction; this case is at CAFC because to once had patent cl…

Well, I would love to hear about a circuit court case that says otherwise. Seriously, I have no idea, but I do not believe such exists.

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

#472

Post by ben509 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #404
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Once they admit to copying some of it, it throws the whole clean room process into doubt. I think the courts are working on the "where there's smoke there's fire" principle.

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

#473

Post by hcknwscommenter »

michaelmrose wrote: post #404
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But they didn't just write their own APIs. They copied them. Thousands of them.

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

#474

Post by monocasa »

tzs wrote: post #293
simias wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google knew what they were doing and IMO they were right. I still don't think Google or anybody should have to ask for Oracle's permission for reimplementing a JVM (as long as it's done cleanly). You seem to put the blame on Google for not wanting to pay $100M at the time but what if instead it was a small startup who simply couldn't afford that cost? I'm not worried about Google in the least, I am however concerned…

> I'm not worried about Google in the least, I am however concerned about the precedent this sets It's legal precedential value is limited, because it was a copyright decision in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC). The general principle for a precedent is that precedent for court X is set by the appeals court that hears appeals from X, and the appeals court that hears appeals from that appeals court,…

Haven't all of the patent issues been settled? So what's to stop a copyright troll from adding ancillary patent claims to be able to use the CAFC for the appeals process from now on.

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

#475

Post by hcknwscommenter »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #369
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IYO did they copy an artistic work?

Copyright covers subjective work, not just "artistic" work. In the same sense that the choice of how to paginate a phone book and where to put the guidewords on each page is copywritable, yes APIs are copyrightable.

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

#476

Post by hcknwscommenter »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #353
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An infinite number of ways. Call it max(b,a) [i.e., reverse the order of b and a inputs]. But Google didn't do any of that. They copied.

You could call it max(b,a) but that would be fucking stupid. People shouldn't have to write shit code cause judges are tech illiterate.

And just how is max(a,b) good code and max(b,a) bad code?

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

#477

Post by monocasa »

zach43 wrote: post #105
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.

> they rightly assumed Sun Microsystems would never do this Interestingly, the article includes a quote from a Sun Microsystems co-founder who agrees with Oracle's stance on this: > Among Oracle’s supporters in the case is Sun co-founder Scott McNealy, who said Java was created to be a platform-neutral system where programmers could “write once, run anywhere.” > Java “is the foundation upon which our digital world is…

> Interestingly, the article includes a quote from a Sun Microsystems co-founder who agrees with Oracle's stance on this

And yet Sun's CEO previously took the stand in support of Google.

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

#478

Post by hcknwscommenter »

s2g wrote: post #374
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google did not do a clean room clone. They simply copied, thus violating the whole point of copyright. If they had developed their own API that simply used different names but was functionally identical, they would not have violated copyright. Copyright protects against copying . They didn't do that because they wanted to take advantage of the huge existing JAVA developer base who would easily be able to use t…

An api with different names isn’t functionally identical, at least not without some sort of very weird indirection.

It depends on your meaning of functionally identical. In the hypothetical non-copied Android ecosystem, it could be functionally identical. In terms of interoperating with Java, no. But I fail to see the relevance of the latter point with respect to copyright. Copyright says: don't copy. If that unfortunately makes it difficult to leverage the existing Java developer base for your multi-corps next megaproject, too bad. Develop your own ecosystem.

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

#479

Post by andybak »

I just read the sub-thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 onwards and started nodding in agreement at the fine arguments therein. But then sanity hit me in the face like a damp glacier and I remembered the 9 lines of code in question.

Please anyone who's ever programmed anything; take a step back and tell me this is sane. Tell me there's not a billion cases like this out there waiting for a lawyer to unearth them.

However persuasive the step by step logic seems, it's the same step by step that paves the road to hell. If logic, reason and law bring us to this point then it's logic, reason and law that need to be carefully reexamined.

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

#480

Post by hcknwscommenter »

wtallis wrote: post #451
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Clean-room reverse engineering produces an implementation that is not a derivative of the original implementation. But if the API itself is copyrightable as a separate work from the implementation, then you have to consider whether the API of the reverse engineered implementation is a derivative of the API of the original implementation. The answer to this question is rather obviously yes , since the reverse engineer…

> Clean-room reverse engineering is only useful in a world where APIs aren't copyrightable.

I disagree. However, I am not aware of any caselaw on this point. It is an interesting logical twist you have added, but I fail to see how it must be that way in view of the fact that copyright explicitly allows clean-room type reverse engineering.

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