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Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

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Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#421

Post by stjohnswarts »

xoxoy wrote: post #211
doesnotexist wrote: post #128

Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to d…

The Google lawyer should be fired. I can’t believe you’d put the best of the best in front of the SC and the guy didn’t even sound like he could describe what an API actually is in non-technical terms. I don’t see how he represented the best legal representation Google could buy.

Yes. They have had -years- to come up with a defense and a crack legal team and then this guy shows up. Maybe they wanted to lose?

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#422

Post by toast0 »

biztos wrote: post #399
hugi wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This was bad representation to the point that I'm wondering if it was intentional. Google might have recently realized that, as a monopoly, fighting for API freedom perhaps isn't in their best interest.

If they wanted to lose, wouldn't it have been much easier (and possibly cheaper) to settle? I can't imagine Oracle would have a problem with getting to say they were right, and getting a boatload of cash, without all the bother of the Supreme Court. And doesn't intentional bad representation have weird and costly externalities, like reputation damage for the lawyer? I love the image of Google and Oracle behaving like…

A Supreme Court ruling is a lot better than settlement if they've decided they want to pivot to sueing independent implementations of their APIs. I wouldn't find it compelling to follow if Google took the other side of a settlement they were involved in to go and pursue others. Maybe they settled because they figured out they could make more money that way, regardless of the question of law.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#423

Post by surround »

doesnotexist wrote: post #128

Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to d…

When I learned that Java is open source, I had assumed that it was free. I guess I was wrong.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#424

Post by zepto »

marcosdumay wrote: post #248
zepto wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say GNU would not exist, which is true in it’s current form. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have had a Unix-like (although not strictly compatible) free system. It’s also true that Safari couldn’t have used XMLHttpRequest unless Microsoft had licensed it . But that might have sped up the incorporation of an open standard alternative. It would definitely have created a different history to the one we have now i…

> Unix-like You mean something that implements all the APIs that the Bell Labs never licensed to anybody?

No, I mean something that has the architectural qualities comparable to Unix, which has been done multiple times.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#425

Post by gerash »

curt15 wrote: post #340
mindcrime wrote: post #74

Maybe we get lucky and the SCOTUS ruling comes down against uncopyable API's. But while that seems questionable at the moment, it's important to remember one thing: there is always an "out" even in the "nuclear option" case and that is "have Congress change the law". It seems to me that now is the time to start thinking about putting together a mass effort to get Congress to change copyright law, to establish clearly…

>but I'm guessing that a few big companies - like cough Google cough might be interested in supporting such an effort. Microsoft also supported Google in this case.

And Apple did not

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#426

Post by Aerroon »

nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

>As applied to Java, individual method signatures like min and max might not be copyrightable, but someone had to go in and organize those individual methods into classes, and organize those classes into packages.

An API doesn't require an implementation and copyright is handed out automatically. Could I then write and run a generator that just starts spitting out endless variations of possible APIs (combinations of dictionary words?). Does that mean I would end up holding the copyright for most of the 'common sense' APIs people would want to use for software projects?

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#427

Post by coliveira »

eastbayjake wrote: post #392
nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

> As is common when HN discusses legal matters I see a lot of people blaming the judges for not understanding tech, but the problem here isn't really the judges so much as the law itself. Or to state it more plainly: the problem is legislators not understanding tech, and not updating our laws to account for the way computers and the internet have transformed society over the last 40 years. This was a similar gripe in…

However, when legislators try to do their job there is ample outcry that big government is infringing on the rights of people and companies to do free commerce. What gives?

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#428

Post by syshum »

IncRnd wrote: post #355
TheMblabla wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the CEO of Sun knew this.. "Google's lawyer, Robert van Nest, asked Schwartz whether, during his tenure at Sun, Java APIs were considered proprietary or protected by Sun." "'No,' Schwartz said in explaining the nature of open software. 'These are open APIs, and we wanted to bring in more people...we wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as possible.'" https://www.cnet.com/news/former-sun-…

Schwartz's beliefs and statements don't apply. Schwartz didn't write the controlling law.

Schwartz's was the CEO of the company that held the "copyright" should one exist at the time of the alleged "infringement"

Thus Schwartz's beliefs are and should be relevant

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#429

Post by dragonwriter »

nojito wrote: post #414
flowerlad wrote: post #3

This isn't just a disaster for Google. This is a disaster for competition in the tech industry and a disaster for consumers. If APIs can be copyrighted, what's next? File formats? On-the-wire protocols?

Google has had 6 years to show this disaster and yet they could not list a single example of it happening. The world is going to be fine.

> Google has had 6 years to show this disaster and yet they could not list a single example of it happening.

How? For that to be true, there would have to be binding precedent applicable outside this case. But Federal Circuit decisions on legal questions—for instance copyright—outside their special subjects (patent claims is what got this case before them) do not create binding precedent for any lower court.

Had this not gone through the Federal Circuit, and had it been the Ninth Circuit (which otherwise would have been the court to hear the appeal) that had ruled, sure, you could then say “Hey, look, there's not some apocalypse due to this ruling happening in the Ninth Circuit, so it must not be a real problem”. But the Federal Circuit decision, notionally applying Ninth Circuit law, has no binding effect on any other court in any other case, so of course it hasn't caused an apocalypse. Precisely because no other court, trial or appellate, has ever held APIs to be copyrightable.

Re: Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

#430

Post by tomatocracy »

nodamage wrote: post #240

I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work…

Naive question: how and why is this different from the various precedents which allowed "clean room" reimplementation of an interface/API?
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