571–580 of 771 posts
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You are describing Supreme Court clerks with your first suggestion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_law_clerks_of_the_S...
I find it hard to believe that even a top performing law school grad would be a subject matter expert comparable to a 5 or 10+ year developer for this topic.
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…
This is not good...not good at all! If Oracle wins, to me with zero knowledge around copyright laws and legalese topics, means small to medium companies will close down out of fear of getting sued for using or implementing a competitor's APIs. Not only that, it feels like the whole technological "civilization" will collapse after this and I'm not exaggerating, because thousands of people will lose their job simply be…
This is an overreaction. We already are in the state you describe, except for patents. The doubly linked list is patented [0]. Selling something over the internet was patented [1]. The list could go on and on. Every major software company has so many patents that they could find an infringement in almost any software company. Why hasn't this happened? Because, like copyright, someone needs to actually bring suit. Tha…
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1. That would probably be considered fair use. 2. The amount of money Oracle would get back (and going forwards) in licensing fees for Android would probably dwarf most financial prospects from any API reimplementations that might be at risk.
> That would probably be considered fair use. Because APIs have never before been considered copyrightable, unless Google wins on fair use in this case, we will have exactly zero on-point case law as to when an API reimplementation is fair use. Speculating on what would be considered fair use in API re-implementations in that case would be extremely speculative. > The amount of money Oracle would get back (and going…
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Having read multiple perspectives, some pro-Google and some pro-Oracle, I cannot reconcile this sort of argument with the Baker v. Selden precedent. [1] Perhaps my understanding of APIs is different because I'm an engineer and not a lawyer, but how is this not an open and shut case? The cookbook analogy is not applicable for the same reason one could not apply it in Baker , accounting methods are not of themselves co…
I think people get thrown off because an API is describe through lots of text and can be huge, where as other things are just a layout. The recipe book itself is copyrightable but the language used to describe the recipe isn’t.
This has until now seemed like it should also mean that the API as API is not copyrightable, and a straightforward implementation of something like `min` is also not, as it's just the only reasonable way to implement `min`. But an especially clever or creative algorithm to implement a part of an API might be.
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…
I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle wins on copyright (I think it is almost impossible for Google to count to 5 on their merger doctrine argument) but I disagree that fair use is a long shot. The justices that brought up the case’s procedural history were all unanimously skeptical that the Federal Circuit correctly set aside the fair use verdict in favor of Google. I think the most likely outcome of this case (especial…
While they really have to be substantially similar to allow interoperability, OpenJDK is open source (GPL) and Oracle's Java is not.
That brings up a couple questions which don't directly bear on the case just heard by the Supremes, but are (IMHO) relevant to potential second-order consequences of a ruling for Oracle:
1. Given that the OpenJDK API is substantially similar to the Oracle Java API, could Google avoid repercussions by switching to the former from their "adaptation" of the latter?
2. Should an API be considered eligible for copyright, wouldn't that enable opportunities for language and library developers to restrict others from developing competing (via performance or utility enhancements) languages/libraries by forcing anyone who wished to implement enhancements to either purchase a license or flat out deny them the ability to do so (assuming the product --including the API isn't open source)?
3. If (2) is the case, what does that mean for incremental improvements of languages and libraries?
I'm not a java dev or a copyright expert, so pardon me if I missed an important point.
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Let's take your proposal further and let's say we have 20 different languages (some even with non English characters), runtimes, compilers, build systems, UI guidelines, etc will uniform distribution across the world. So even if you want to publish a software for your home country you'll only be able to reach 5% of population with any single tool chain. Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime…
> Are you willing to learn all those 20 different language/runtime/tool chains? No, and that's exactly my point. Because it would be impossible to support everything, developers and corporations might have to aim for more limited reach. I imagine that would lead to a situation where we have 20 different widely supported kernels, 20 different up-to-date web browsers, 20 different modern OSes, etc. I would love to be a…
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Companies don't bother with principled consistency, and so I wouldn't expect any from Microsoft if this goes Oracle's way. It's totally possible that Microsoft thinks APIs being non-copyrightable is good for them on net, but that if SCOTUS decides otherwise that they might as well go crush WINE anyway since they now have the means.
What would the benefit to MS be to crush w WINE. They have made a big effort to rebuild their reputation with developers, and WINE doesn’t really hurt their bottom line. They have no incentive.
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The difference is that Baker didn’t involve literal copying of the accounting tables. Baker is treated as a merger case, but it’s more a case about the difference between copyright and a method patent. Baker claimed that copying the general structure of the tables was infringement. The court essentially held that the structure that was copied was the structure dictated by the method itself. And Selden couldn’t copyri…
Then, the question is whether these choices of where to put the parameter reflect any creativity. Though the choices are creative, it's necessary to replicate them exactly to produce a functioning interface for existing Java code. It's like a design for an electrical connector; maybe patentable, but it's essential to the function so shouldn't be copyrightable.