Google and Oracle's decade-long copyright battle reaches Supreme Court

Oracle is pursuing a dubious interpretation of copyright that puts the entire software industry at risk of chaos. This is deeply irresponsible, and would be irresponsible even if Oracle's theory had a leg to stand on. And nevermind software, allowing Oracle's position to prevail would call into question the legality of every set of facts that are freely used across many knowledge domains.

> The question the judge would have to answer, is the non GPLd portion a "derivative work" of the GPLd portion and is that derivative work being distributed.

Technically the derivative work is the combination of the two, not just the non-GPLd portion. Part of the argument that a lawyer would have to do is to define what "the work" is, and arguing distinction in linking technology might not be that great strategy to an non-technical judge or jury. If you present a video player what people likely will see as the work is the video player, not some independent code, independent glue and 20-30 independent library dependencies. As programmers however we might see things a bit different in the same way a painter will look at paint on a canvas.

However I would agree that if there exist multiple interchangeable libraries the argument for two independent work seems to be much stronger. There are for example multiple libc implementations, and for those one could make a case that a program and its libc dependency does not create a derivative work. In practice however I doubt such argument would be much of a benefit in real GPL infringement cases.

The wine project has a rather strong fair use clause regardless of the outcome of this court case, since it would be a rather difficult argument for Microsoft to argue that wine has caused considerable commercial damage. Basically every point of fair use is applicable here, from "Purpose and character of the use", "Amount and substantiality", "Effect upon work's value" and additional values like acknowledgement of the copyrighted source (if the API is copyrightable). Wine is a compatibility layer, not an re-implementation. Courts would naturally have to consider if that distinction is relevant but I suspect they would have a much easier time than java on android.

> when it's Google's intention that will decide this case.

Why do you presuppose to know the legal rule that the Supreme Court will articulate in its decision? I mean, you seem to presuppose that the Court will uphold the Federal Circuit on all contested questions of law and only reconsider whether the decision on the facts is reasonable, which is...mighty presumptuous.

It's quite conceivable that Google could win on a more fundamental ground, since the question of whether the API is even protected by copyright or unprotected as a functional element (which also does not turn on Google’s intent) is a love issue in the appeal. They win on that, and the Court doesn't have to touch anything else.

Even if they do need to address the fair use question because Google loses on copyright ability, the Court a lot will turn on the standard of review and the Seventh Amendment as to whether the Court is really probing Google's intent (de novo review) or merely probing whether any reasonable jury could have concluded that the use was fair, as the actual trial jury did here, preserving the right to jury trial. I would expect the latter, the Federal Circuit seems to have gone completely off the rails invoking de novo review to overturn the jury verdict.

This author clearly does not understand software

Those are phyrric victories, nothing from Linux is exposed to userspace.

Google can replace Linux with Zirkon tomorrow and 99% of Android apps won't even notice.

Just like TVs, who cares what OS a smart TV is running.