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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

#581

Post by icebraining »

chii wrote: post #506
icebraining wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true, but if you type and distribute a book that happens to match the latest Harry Potter, nobody - including the courts - will believe you independently came up with that exact sequence of words. Similarly, if you copy the definitions of all functions/methods/classes/etc from one API, nobody will believe you independently came up with it.

Even if the methods and functions are so basic as to not have variations?

It's hard to tell about APIs, since there's no caselaw, but the rule for texts is that the smaller they are, the more original they have to be to qualify for copyright protection - so conversely, the sheer length of a work makes it more likely to be protected even if it's not that original.

So "add(a, b) returning the sum of the two" is probably not copyrightable by itself, but a whole namespace full of functions might be.

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

#582

Post by bonesss »

jgh wrote: post #522
curt15 wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After all, the sole purpose of such reimplementations would be to take business away from Amazon.

what about things like aftermarket car parts? 3rd party phone cases?

Lego-peg compatible toys made by other producers?

Other forms of structured metadata use cross-party?

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

#583

Post by bonesss »

kybernetikos wrote: post #565
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>normal clean rooms allow documentation Uhhh. No. Just no. I don't think you understand the meaning of "clean room" in this context. In this context, clean room means that the person in the room is untainted by any copyrighted information full stop.

Yes, and the normal way you do this is by having some people (who can be tainted) write a bunch of documentation. Then the documentation gets passed to the people working in the 'clean room' who then implement based on that documentation. The problem I'm describing is that in this case the kind of thing you'd typically want to write in that documentation is exactly the signatures of methods, which would amount to cop…

Not a lawyer, and I agree with your overall point, but I think usage examples are as tainted as the raw API.If the API is copyrighted with no fair use exemption for interop, why would that protection not extend to the API usage which contain the same information? "void IFoo.bar()" and "myFoo.bar() // returns void" are pretty similar and equally as "infringing" IMO.

These $9 Billion dollars will look great on Oracles bottom line. The mega-billions in possible lost trade and efficiency make me think this ruling gets reversed with a vengeance.

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

#584

Post by bonesss »

BonesJustice wrote: post #498
Zigurd wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strictly speaking, Java isn't used in Android. There is no JVM in Android, and there never was. It doesn't run Java bytecode. Java ends where dex translates Java bytecode. In recent version of Android, there's another layer where Dalvik bytecode is compiled to the target architecture. So don't think of Java being in Android. The Android toolchain uses Java, but the Android runtime is not a Java runtime. For one thing…

It also erodes Google’s claims of fair use. Leveraging the Java language and APIs benefited Google much more than it benefited the Java ecosystem at large. Almost anything that targets Java can now be used on Android, but the reverse is not true. The sharing largely flows one way. Google had little interest in expanding the reach of the Java platform—they wanted to attract Java developers to their “looks like Java, b…

> The sharing largely flows one way.

While this may hit on our sense of fairness, it has no relation to legal "fair use". My political parody show owes no profits to the subjects of my derision, IoW.

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

#585

Post by [deleted] »

hcknwscommenter wrote: post #478
s2g wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ba…

[deleted]

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

#586

Post by efigle2501 »

ABCLAW wrote: post #536
ben509 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I get that you don't like them, but that's tough beans." It's hard to overstate how difficult it is to separate what you want the law to be from what it is. This is why people do so badly at representing themselves, and even lawyers have this problem.

Yep. There is a ton of layperson misinformation in this thread motivated by how people 'feel' about certain issues without actually reading the decisions or understanding the tests in question. There are laypeople literally getting angry at me that the court didn't say what they think is right. Oh well. I hope some people found it useful.

Love your work. Makes sense, thanks.

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

#587

Post by BlackFly »

na85 wrote: post #466
fuzzieozzie wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[cynical comment] Do you think the court is trying to guarantee jobs for lawyers?

That lawyers exist is a good thing. It means we have a human, nuanced perspective on the finer points and interpretation of the law, which in Western civilization reigns supreme over all other things. Lawyers will never become obsolete until we no longer live in a society that obeys the rule of law.

I strongly disagree.

In this day and age, there are far too many laws to both understand and be sure you are law abiding. Ignorance of the law is a given. Ignorance not being an excuse for something like murder makes sense because you should just know better, ignorance not being an excuse in possession of the feathers of a protected animal that you found on the ground should be valid even though this presents an insurmountable burden to prosecution: it shouldn't be possible that picking up feathers you find on the ground is a crime, but it is.

The sentence "a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client" should be an indictment of the legal system and not a jeer at the self-represented. Justice should be given to those who deserve it, not to those who manufacture it through technicalities. The fact that a lawyer is necessary to achieve justice implies you are not achieving justice but rather merely a bureaucratic victory.

This state just renders law into bureaucracy and divorces it from the concept of justice. The rule of law is only sensible insofar as it can achieve justice, not as its own end divorced of anything humanly meaningful.

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

#588

Post by miskin »

dlanouette wrote: post #81
Spivak wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whaaa? I mean Java is undoubtedly more popular because of Android but it's not like it was hurting before. Sure, there aren't a lot of consumer-facing applications running Java but it's pretty much the standard on the enterprise side of things.

Java on mobile was (virtually) dead before Android. Now it's thriving and relevant again.

J2ME was king on mobile devices in Europe (at least). Moreover, SUN had licencing fees from J2ME and if I remember correctly, you could not use Java on mobile devices without paying fee to SUN. So, it was their source of income and Google abused that. Just check interview (many times referenced here in comments) with James Gosling to see what the feelins on SUN side were. At that point, they were already underdogs compared to Google. This is all about greedy Google business behaviour and I think with Oracle they just got nice sparing partner to play legal war games with. SUN was too nice for them.

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

#589

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jerf wrote: post #368
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number sequence to word differentiation you make is specious - you may not consider it creative but there's a creative spark in choice of a number, or choice of a location in memory that leads to choice of a number, etc., as you later intimate that creativity is technically lead. The choice of call name in an API are arbitrary, the reuse of those names to interface with that API is not a creative copy it's a tech…

The key word in first bit of my post is "court". I think standing in front of a judge and explaining that your choice of 1,383,929,380 is "creative" is, well, something you're welcome to try. The real key point is in the second half, though. Arguing over whether or not a particular micro-decision is "creative" is the entirely wrong track to be taking when we're discussing something that is functional , that performs…

Judges aren't fools (but some can be persuaded to be!).

It's impossible for a collection of letters to be creative but for that collection of letters when represented numerically to be no longer creative. If I make up some BS for how there's a correspondence between these symbols and other symbols (1=alpha, 2=bravo, ...; or 1=sandwich, 2=wellington, ...) - then 1383() is just sandwichBiscuitAppleBiscuit(). Then it's clear the creative aspects of the program, API, or whatever, don't lie in the specific choice of tokens.

Would a judge agree that providing a dictionary/key that says an arbitrary name for each number (easy to do programmatically) makes a program creative that otherwise wouldn't be. It's clearly ridiculous. Not least because it would mean that duplicating a work that was compressed, or represented in binary, would then no longer be a tort, because apparently numerical representation would rule out a work from being creative.

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