[dodobirdlord]

Nobody is saying that the overall design of a system isn’t subject to intellectual property law. But it’s an area of patents rather than copyright. Amazon until recently held a patent (it just expired) on the concept of having a button on a webpage that you click to buy something. IBM at one point held a patent on the concept of sending data from one computer to another computer. One of Google’s arguments in the case is that Oracle is trying to argue a copyright claim on something that is actually covered by patent law (and which was already found in lower court not to be a patent infringement). If you invented a fancy new way to couple together electrical wiring, or train cars, or drivetrain to a motor, then you would file a patent for it. My take is that Oracle is banking on the fact that an API is written in words (especially in Java...) to muddy the waters enough to obscure the technical and thus not copyrightable nature of an API.