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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

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Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#321

Post by youdontknowtho »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #152
snarf21 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is beyond sad. Oracle bought Sun exclusively to sue Google for its use of Java in Android. (I know someone involved in the lawsuits.) We really need to fix our patent system on the software side.

Oracle bought Sun exclusively to sue Google for its use of Java in Android. I think MySQL had something to do with it too. Even if just to capture the mindshare of all the developers using it at the time.

Yeah, at the time they were also talking about being like Apple and being a software and hardware company...so the Sun hardware was part of it too.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#322

Post by [deleted] »

djsumdog wrote: post #201
danjoc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>are we no violating their copyright just by implementing their API? OpenJDK is GPL. If you comply with GPL, no. This is the problem, Google copied and did not comply with the GPL. Their other option was to pay Oracle/Sun a licensing fee for a commercial license. This is exactly the business model many GPL users follow. Ruling otherwise makes this business model invalid, but it also creates a double standard. Conside…

Huh .. so why doesn't Google just release their Android Java runtime under the GPL? Seems like an easy win all the way around? I thought the OpenJDK people needed certain concessions to release their VM under the GPL?

[deleted]

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#323

Post by cptskippy »

mlindner wrote: post #303
lallysingh wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think because there are no identifiers. The BIOS API is: fill registers with these values, run this interrupt. That's different from openFileWithName(String fileName).

What? No those are the same thing. Why is an API suddenly not copyrightable if its 0x51234 offset 5 bits, vs human readable text? That is nonsense. Numbers and words should not be treated differently. What if I named my function 015342342(String 123949)? How does that change anything?

openFileWithName is a mnemonic that a software developer uses and which a machine translates into a literal location at compile time.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#324

Post by hcknwscommenter »

protomyth wrote: post #307
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>IBM was so sure that the BIOS API could not be copyrighted they basically made their source public That is not how copyright works. You almost got it right with your comment "anyone reading the manuals to understand the BIOS was tainted and couldn't write a competitor." Copyright protects against copying . It does not protect against independent development. Hence the clean room set up.

If the BIOS API was copyrightable, they would have had to do nothing and simply declare that they owned the copyright to the API and thus no clones. Since they couldn't do that, they had to go to the extra step.

That is simply incorrect. Copyright covers copying. It does not cover independent re-implementation. That is the point of clean-room re-implementation. It is not copying because--> clean room.

Silly Example: you design a phone book containing all the names and phone numbers of everyone in the city. To the extent that any subjective decisions were made in the design, it is a copyrighted work. I design a phone book. If I copy yours, it is a violation of your copyright. If I collate the underlying information and then make my own phone book it is not copying, even if it looks exactly the same.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#325

Post by wvenable »

ninkendo wrote: post #247
monocasa wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The court has made the point now that literally just the class and method names are subject to copyright.

Devil’s advocate here... the method signatures, the layout of the classes, what inherits from what, what bits are private vs public, are all pretty non-trivial. Moreover it’s where a lot of the subjective decision making happens, whereas the actual implementations are straightforward once you know what the method signatures should be. I don’t necessarily agree with the decision but I can see where they’re coming from…

I think it's important to remember what copyright is meant to protect -- expressions of ideas. You can't copyright the structure of an engine in a car. You can't copyright medicine.

There is a bit of a "intellectual property" slippy slope going on here. Whether or not something is useful or non-trivial is inconsequential.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#326

Post by blattimwind »

jlgaddis wrote: post #205
blattimwind wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik there are several certified GNU/Linux derivatives.

I'm not seeing any [0]. Care to name one? [0]: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Both EulerOS and Inspur K-UX are Linux.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#328

Post by hcknwscommenter »

oldandtired wrote: post #310
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google did not do a clean room clone. They simply copied, thus violating the whole point of copyright. If they had developed their own API that simply used different names but was functionally identical, they would not have violated copyright. Copyright protects against copying . They didn't do that because they wanted to take advantage of the huge existing JAVA developer base who would easily be able to use t…

AS has been covered elsewhere, an API is a functional description and not copyrightable, irrespective of what a specific court says. This specific court has had its rulings slapped about so much by the next higher court, it is a wonder that they haven't just packed up and gone home. That is why telephone books and others things are not copyrightable. They are lists of facts. API's are lists of facts, a functional spe…

Telephone books are copyrightable. This is black letter law. As said by the Supreme Court in Feist, "Notwithstanding a valid copyright, a subsequent compiler remains free to use the facts contained in another's publication to aid in preparing a competing work, so long as the competing work does not feature the same selection and arrangement,"

In other words, if it does feature the same selection and arrangement, it is a violation of copyright.

Your statement that APIs are not copyrightable is not true as well.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#329

Post by wvenable »

treis wrote: post #180
alex_young wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you apply this view to all APIs, the computer revolution would never have happened. The PC was a clone of IBMs API. They fought this battle and lost and now we can argue about it on little handheld clones all day long.

There's a fundamental difference between: Blackbox testing -> API Specification -> Implementation and Copy API Specification -> Implementaton In the first case, you will come up with something similar but ultimately original. In the second case you are blatantly copying someone else's work.

People who reversed engineered the IBM BIOS had the API specification -- actually they had the entire source code. They didn't just fire random interrupts at the BIOS and see what it did. But what they did do was take that specification and describe it the detail necessary for completely fresh implementation.

Re: Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

#330

Post by hcknwscommenter »

tankenmate wrote: post #291
hcknwscommenter wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reimplementation does not necessarily violate copyright. Copying does violate copyright (absent fair use). Like verbatim copying. Example, Google didn't have to use the “java.lang.Math.max(a,b)” header, but they did. They did copy because they wanted to leverage the existing Java developer base who would easily be able to develop for Android, without having to do the hard work of building their own ecosystem. Overall…

Copyright exists to protect artistic expression, not functionality. Functionality is protected by patents.

Exactly. I don't see what you are disagreeing with. The point is that in order to leverage Java's developer base as quickly as possible they made it possible for Java developers to essentially develop for Android without needing to learn a new syntax for all the APIs they already knew. That is why they copied.
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