[sixbrx]

> Why the heck would any developers use HIP with this legal issue up in the air?

Probably because if just implementing an API really turns out to be a disallowed by law - and I'm not familiar enough with the Google/Oracle case in particular or the law in general to know how well it generalizes to such a conclusion - then most of the stuff I rely on goes poof anyway.

[wtallis]

The way the Oracle/Google case got resolved was that the Federal Circuit made a ruling that almost everyone agreed was wrong with respect to the copyright issues but that there was little danger of any other circuit ruling that way on future cases that didn't have a patent aspect to get them in front of the Federal Circuit. Part of the Supreme Court's reasoning for not taking up the issue probably was that the Federal Circuit hadn't and couldn't create any binding precedent in the matter (as they were supposed to be following the local circuit's law on the non-patent aspects of the case).