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Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

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Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#131

Post by vegedor »

ewillbefull wrote: post #71
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69

Quick question: Why can't an API be copyrighted? My understanding is that the purpose of a copyright is to protect a specific arrangement of ideas. A piece of music, a book, a painting. All of those things are an arrangement, and the arrangement itself is what's protected by copyright, not the physical object that was created. So, given that an API is an arrangement of ideas, and that copyright apparently protects ar…

The Copyright Act states: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." The common belief is that an API meets this "system or method of operation" standard.

Please name one thing that doesn't meat any of these standards, maybe then I can understand the difference.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#132

Post by vegedor »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #73
ewillbefull wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Copyright Act states: "In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work." The common belief is that an API meets this "system or method of operation" standard.

Hmm... What's a "method of operation" in the context of computer programs? This isn't helpful: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Method+of+oper... I really don't understand how an API is a method of operation in any sense. It's an understanding between people about how to use a software library. The only sense that I could see it being a method of operation is literally "This is a description of how you o…

Here's my API, it's just one function:

  void* foo(int bar);
Is this really instructive? It is to the compiler, anyhow, telling how much stack to pop and push for the argument and return values.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#133

Post by AnthonyMouse »

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #122
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't really a problem. You can have two programs that do the same thing, e.g. BSD cat and GNU cat, but you're copyrighting the specific implementation rather than the method of operation. Each method of operation can have arbitrarily many different implementations.

By that logic, copyrighting APIs is not really a problem either: Each API can have arbitrarily different concepts, paradigms, organization, and naming and calling conventions. Hence even APIs for doing the exact same things can (and do) look completely different from each other. Compare, for examples, the Java APIs with those for C++, C#, Python, Ruby, Go, etc. etc.

> Each API can have arbitrarily different concepts, paradigms, organization, and naming and calling conventions. Hence even APIs for doing the exact same things can (and do) look completely different from each other.

If they're "doing the exact same things" then they're the same API. That's what an API is -- it's a formal declaration of the function(s) implemented by the implementation. Its purpose is literally to separate the part that can be implementation specific from the part that can't. The purpose of an API is to be the part that can't.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#134

Post by nitrogen »

rayiner wrote: post #62
nitrogen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

simply does not care about whether finding API's to be copyrightable hinders interoperability or cloning of software. That is exactly why a legal professional is the wrong person to decide the issue. I've written plenty of APIs myself, and when it comes to interoperability, anybody should be free to reimplement the same interfaces, no matter how creative my design. Anything else would destroy competition in the softw…

> [A]nybody should be free to reimplement the same interfaces, no matter how creative my design. Anything else would destroy competition in the software industry and promote a virtual dystopia of vendor lock-in. But that isn't a technical argument. If it had some empirical support it might be an economic one, but it's mostly just an ideological argument. One that, I might add, many software engineers would disagree w…

I'd like to meet one of these hypothetical "many software engineers" whose political opinions are so destructive to their own field.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#135

Post by aragot »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #91
aragot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> copyright the laws That's an excellent point. If you run a service, you can use someone else's TOS and apply it to your customers. It is the outcome of intellectual work, for instance a lawyer's work, and it is under copyright. However, it is not clever to reuse someone else's contract anyway and you'd better use a lawyer to check its terms. Therefore I don't think the wording of contracts, norms, standards and law…

Whatever you may think the wording of contracts [etc] pretty clearly falls under copyright protection in the US. The wording. What does not (or has not before) are the _meanings_. You in fact, can't, under US law, take someone elses TOS and just plain copy it. I'm not sure if you meant to say "can't" instead of "can" in your comment -- but in fact, you pretty clearly can't just copy the text of the TOS. What you can…

Correct, I meant "can't".

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#136

Post by tzs »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #69

Quick question: Why can't an API be copyrighted? My understanding is that the purpose of a copyright is to protect a specific arrangement of ideas. A piece of music, a book, a painting. All of those things are an arrangement, and the arrangement itself is what's protected by copyright, not the physical object that was created. So, given that an API is an arrangement of ideas, and that copyright apparently protects ar…

I don't recall which case this was in, but the court in one of the early API cases noted that allowing copyright of APIs would give the copyright owner control over the use of their software that is almost the same as the control a patent gives a patentee over the use of their invention--except for a much much longer term, and without any requirement of novelty or non-obviousness.

Copyright is supposed to protect just the expression of an idea, not the underlying idea itself. With API copyrights, there isn't room left for others to express the same idea.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#137

Post by tzs »

I'm a little confused by how precedent works here.

Normally, in a copyright case, the appeals court for a case heard in the 9th Circuit would be the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The ruling of that court would then be binding precedent for future 9th Circuit cases.

However, in this case the case in the district court was both a copyright case AND a patent case, and for patent cases the appeals court is the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (they have exclusive subject matter jurisdiction over patent appeals). The CAFC only got the copyright case because it came along for the ride with the patent case.

How does precedent work when the CAFC gets something that would normally not go through them? Do they still set national precedent for that, or do they just set precedent for subsequent cases that are appealed to CAFC (e.g., subsequent copyright cases that hitch a ride on something the CAFC has exclusive subject matter jurisdiction over)?

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#138

Post by mooph »

marcosdumay wrote: post #78
mooph wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've created MOOPH module in JavaScript. Purpose of this module is to make it easy to code a pseudomultithreaded application (so it can be seen as API). This module can be used to create various creative content (games, editors, whatever...). However one of possible pseudothreads may include quickly content from external sites to DOM - making a DOS. If multiple users access such project, it could make a DDOS. I hope…

You seem to be missing the meaning of the word API. I sugest you look it out.

I've looked the meaning of word "interface" out. I used slovnik.cz (translator). Interface is translated as point of contact, connection, relationship, coordination, correspondence. In some czech phrases it's translated as bus (in USB) or as interface (GUI) or as interface if we speak about point used to connect peripherals to computer. In one of meanings it is close to the meaning of word "edge". I wouldn't be surprised if translation created disorder in law...

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#139

Post by wfjackson »

judk wrote: post #121
rayiner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a tactical mistake to include the folks affiliated with Google. Amicus briefs are supposed to be from parties who have an interest in the dispute, but not a personal stake in either party. Including so many people affiliated with Google will come across negatively.

Everyone who owns a mutual fund has a stake in Google.

And possibly Oracle as well.

Re: Computer Scientists Ask Supreme Court to Rule APIs Can’t Be Copyrighted

#140

Post by zaroth »

I really do hope we can't copyright a single function signature. But then, you expand it into an entire framework, or the perfectly designed kernel... What is software if not a collection of API calls? There's clearly something worth copyrighting at some point.

I think what it comes down to is it's copyright, but there's an exception for compatibility. Like a 3rd party part in your car. You can't claim it's the other brand's product, but you can claim it's compatible with that brand. It happens all the time, in all industries. So why can't it be the same with software APIs? A copyright exception for "interfaces" sounds like a pretty safe approach.

Unless their's a patent involved preventing someone from recreating a certain process or method, or a trademark preventing confusion, the act of creativity itself cannot be bounded. Copyright gives rights to the creator for their own creation. It can't prevent someone else from trying to create the same thing with their own hands.

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