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Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

supremecourt.gov

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Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#261

Post by stupendousyappi »

jsjsbdkj wrote: post #176
abhv wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPDATE: based on Wikipedia [1], the "API" was likely saved by one of these people (all likely in their mid-20s!): Emily Barnet, 2020, Yale (2015) Diana Li Kim, 2020, Yale (2017) Arjun Ramamurti, 2020, Yale (2018) Daniel Richardson, 2020, Virginia (2018) Brittany Jones-Record, 2020, Stanford (2016) David Scott Louk, 2020, Yale (2015) Elizabeth B. Deutsch, 2021, Yale (2016) Joel F. Wacks, 2021, Chicago (2018) [1] https…

A supreme court clerkship is very impressive, but "saved by one of these people" is strong. My understanding is the justices have a conference, stake out their positions, and then the chief assigns cases based on who can attract a majority to their opinion. So Breyer presumably had a rationale that could get at least 4 concurrences in conference. It's possible for the other justices to later change their minds based…

Breyer was a prominent copyright law scholar before he became a judge. Between that, and the fact that he hasn't gotten many opportunities to write majority opinions in his 27 years on the court, and the fact that he's likely about to retire in a few months, giving him the opinion was the obvious and collegial thing for Roberts to do.

I'm biased, but I don't think the technical elements of this case were challenging to an intelligent layman. I think most people smart enough to become judges can understand the concept of an interface that is independent from an implementation, which is all this case really required, along with quantitative estimates of the amount of code involved. So I doubt that he needed clerks to understand any of it.

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#262

Post by jcranmer »

jpdb wrote: post #249
jcranmer wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Oracle is now copying AWS's API to try to enter the cloud market. (This was explicitly brought up in one of the amici briefs).

Are you referring to the S3 API? I believe the S3 API is explicitly licensed under Apache. Disclaimer: I was previously employed by Amazon and currently Google. Opinions are my own, I'm not a lawyer, etc.

And OpenJDK is GPLv2 with a classpath exception. So why is Google unable to use Java's API here while Oracle able to use Amazon's API?

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#264

Post by flowerlad »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #168
flowerlad wrote: post #124

This has impact beyond APIs. The Supreme Court says copying User Interface is fair use. Excerpts: The nature of the work at issue favors fair use. The copied lines of code are part of a “user interface” that provides a way for programmers to access prewritten computer code through the use of simple commands. As a result, this code is different from many other types of code, such as the code that actually instructs th…

You're reading too much into that. The user in this case is the programmer using the API, or even the code that uses the API. It's doesn't generalize to end user interfaces.

The same principle applies, and for the same reasons mentioned in the portions I excerpted above.

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#265

Post by AnthonyMouse »

billsix wrote: post #92
icegreentea2 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this ruling interact with GPL?

Perhaps this https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP...

That's a different situation though. You're then distributing something intended to link with readline -- not just implementing its API yourself but using its entire original implementation.

What you could perhaps do is create your own implementation of the readline API distributed under a different license and then claim your program is intended to link against that, but how would you claim that if no such implementation exists? Whereas if you have to write your own readline implementation in order to use it then you still end up with a large incentive to avoid that by releasing your work under the GPL instead.

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#266

Post by Natanael_L »

hajile wrote: post #187
qalmakka wrote: post #12

This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.

I’d make the case that it instead saved closed source coding. Open source code is still usually copyrighted. Nobody would trust closed languages and APIs unless they paid a fortune for them while open source with a grant would be safe to use.

It also saved open source software which reimplements proprietary API:s

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#267

Post by stickfigure »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #126

For better or worse, the same arguments ( "API is copyrightable" ) is what was used in the past to prevent 98's Microsoft from doing embrace-extend-extinguish to Java with their "JavaVM with P/Invoke'd Win32 API". The idea in that case was that when you try to implement something identical to the Java language and standard library, it doesn't matter if you call it Java or "Visual J++"; you are still implementing Java…

I led the development of a large GUI app using J++ in the late 90s. This fear you describe is unwarranted.

It's worth pointing out that the list of examples of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" on the wikipedia page of that name [1] contains zero actual successful examples of it working. Perhaps you have noticed that you aren't reading this page in an ActiveX control.

This is a boogeyman. Don't be afraid of it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#268

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #126

For better or worse, the same arguments ( "API is copyrightable" ) is what was used in the past to prevent 98's Microsoft from doing embrace-extend-extinguish to Java with their "JavaVM with P/Invoke'd Win32 API". The idea in that case was that when you try to implement something identical to the Java language and standard library, it doesn't matter if you call it Java or "Visual J++"; you are still implementing Java…

Microsoft extended the JDK with VisualJ++, by introducing their COM based version of JNI. They claimed that the result was the same thing; now Google reimplemented the JDK while keeping the same API. that makes a subtle difference. I wonder what would have happened if Microsoft were to have sold VisualJ++ as 'Microsoft JDK'.

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#269

Post by softwaredoug »

Judge William Alsup learned to code for this case, and was therefore able to avoid a lot of the BS being peddled around the significance of some of the code:

> The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. ... It was in Oracle’s interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle’s lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it.

> “I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this trial,” said the judge. “But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times or more. I could do it. You could do it. It is so simple.”

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl...

Re: Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

#270

Post by Jonnax »

The_rationalist wrote: post #32
Bluecobra wrote: post #23

I am glad Oracle didn't win. It seems to me that they bought Sun just to sue Google. I'm still bitter over for how they destroyed Sun... it's a shame that they didn't have a better steward.

Oracle is making a lot of innovation in openjdk and graalvm. They have much better engineers than if e.g Google had bought sun.

Ah yes. The company that forbids people from benchmarking their database must be a bastion of good engineering.
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