This advise by the Solicitor General hinges on an interpretation of section 102(b) of the copyright act. That section essentially says that "methods of operation" can't be copyrighted.
The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.
The SG does what the President tells him/her. This is the policy of the Executive Office of the President. The Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch and not some independent agency.
All code is a formalized description of "methods of operation". Unless you believe software achieves practical results without the benefit of hardware. And that's assuming you write pure assembly, else you also have firmware, operating systems, drivers, libraries, runtimes, or whatever supporting infrastructure is needed for your code to do anything meaningful.
I agree that all code is a formalized description of "methods of operation", unless the legal phrase "methods of operation" has some exotic, inobvious meaning, like "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches" has taken on.
That's why the US shouldn't allow software patents. Software is either mathematical or a formalized description of a method of operation.
On the contrary, patents are exactly what are intended to cover methods of operation. A lot of court decisions regarding copyrightability explicitly mention this. Note, patents usually don't cover the formalized description itself (mainly because it would result in an overly narrow patent) but rather what you can use software to do.
Here's a claim from the infamous one-click patent:
1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:
under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and
in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and
fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
It's a description alright, but there's nothing mathematical or formalized about it (though a software implementation would be a lot of code - formalized description - that applies a bunch of mathematics).
It's good that you're distinguishing "patent" from "copyright" from the vague morass of "Intellectual Property".
The goodness of patents depends on them being inobvious, and the receipient of the patent actually disclosing something useful. Otherwise, once again, the government is just granting a state-enforced monopoly on something, rather arbitrarily.
The problems with "IP" don't rest merely with distinguishing "idea" from "instantiation" (or whatever the legal term is), but rather derive from a much deeper level of problem and paradox.
Code is a specific implementation of a method of operation. The code can be copyright protected. But not the formats the code reads and emits. Not the language the code is written in. Not the machine language the computer processes. Not the method signatures in the code. Etc.
Actually, formats and languages are not, but the generated machine code is copyright protected as a "derivative work". This is how binaries enjoy copyright protection, because they are "derived" from copyright-protected human-produced code. I think that's a bit crazy that a potentially useful product by itself has no intrinsic protection.
As for method signatures, at a human readable level, they are as protected as any other code. Note that copyright protects expression rather than what the code does. So File.open(fname) and open(fname, 'r') and new File(fname) are all different expressions of the concept of "open a file with a given name)". The concept is not covered, but the specific expression is. Of course, a single method is not sufficient, but this case involves a collection of hundreds of such signatures.
I agree about generated machine code. I was referring to an instruction set architecture, that is, the format of the machine code, not the specific sequence of code generated from translating a higher-level language.
I can't agree about method signatures, though. They are like a language, a format, a protocol, none of which are protectable.
There is nothing contradictory about it: as you say, the API is not the method of operation, it's one of many possible descriptions of the method of operation. I don't think anyone is confused by what an API is--its a simple concept.
> There is nothing contradictory about it: as you say, the API is not the method of operation, it's one of many possible descriptions of the method of operation. I don't think anyone is confused by what an API is--its a simple concept.
Then what exactly is an API, if it's so clear and simple to define in your opinion?
Depending on how one stretches it, everything that is not assembly is an API. I don't know the details of the particular legal argument involved but it's going to get very murky if you claim certain levels of abstraction are copy-rightable and others are not.
I disagree. Unless "method of operation" is some godforsaken legalistic bastardization of the language, APIs are methods of operation, not a description. In Java you must use those exact symbols to use the software... the description would be the documentation and Javadoc comments about the code, which I agree could certainly be eligible for copyright protection
Walking is a method of operation. A video of someone walking, or a story about someone walking is a tangible description, not the method of operation itself.
The concept of a function with the name cupcake that takes an integer and returns an integer is different than the description "int cupcake(int x)." The interoperability aspect is a red herring--there is no right to interoperate.
That's not the way most people are using the term, if you are going to use it differently from everyone else, you should clarify the meaning of your usage of the term.
> The concept of a function...is different than the description...
I would say that's either not true or entirely non-obvious, because to establish that the concept is what is being described in the later case is you had to provide some form of description in the previous case, in this case:
> a function with the name cupcake that takes an integer and returns an integer
happens to be the common-english equivalent for
> int cupcake(int x)
The primary difference being that one is valid as an English-sentence and one is valid as a declaration in c, it's not altogether clear why you consider the common-english-expression as having some kind of special precedence, or how such an example helps us establish the difference between a concept and a description of a concept (even supposing such a duality does exist).
> The interoperability aspect is a red herring--there is no right to interoperate.
Not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that the Supreme court indeed has and at times does consider the effect on the common good from a particular interpretation of a law in their decision making.
> That's not the way most people are using the term, if you are going to use it differently from everyone else, you should clarify the meaning of your usage of the term.
How do people use the term "method of operation?" I'm trying to draw your attention to the distinction between the abstract process of walking (moving your legs in a particular way), and concrete descriptions of that method.
> I would say that's either not true or entirely non-obvious, because to establish that the concept is what is being described in the later case is you had to provide some form of description in the previous case, in this case:
Sure, any abstract concept cannot be discussed by humans without reducing it to a written or spoken description. But that does not mean that the concept and the description are the same thing.
> happens to be the common-english equivalent for
Or "fn cupcake(x: i32) -> i32" or "function cupcake(x: integer) : integer;" etc. There are many different concrete descriptions of the abstract concept of a function taking an integer and returning an integer.
I think we are actually in agreement here... it seems as if you consider "API" to mean the documentation of the function, while I am considering it to be the actual compiled Java bytecode (which is not a description of the function, it actually is the "tangible" function)
If the copyrightable work is the description of the API... then I would argue that simply writing "int cupcake(int x)" is not expressive in a way that can be copyrighted, since it is really the only precise way of describing the bytecode. However any extra information (such as Javadoc comments or other documentation) could definitely be expression.
Yet Google claims that the implementing code should be protected by copyright. How is "return a > b ? a : b;" not a method of operation if "public static int Max(int a, int b)" is...
If the implementation, CODE(!), is of course a formalized description of methods of operation, the declaring code (or API) is providing a means of access to it. Something that takes quite a bit of thought and creativity to do well.
Neither one of those is substantial enough for copyright. They should be considered in the context of a whole body of work. Using books as an analogy, an API most closely resembles chapters and headings. Is it copyright infringement to write a new book that follows the same outline as a previous book? (I don't know...)
Not only do APIs resemble the chapters and headings of a book, they aslo include the contract that the content under those headings have exactly the same behaviour.
Google didn't just copy the "heading" java.lang.Math.max() they also copied the contract that calling this method should always return the bigger of the two arguments. Ergo, the "content" under the heading is the same, or rather the any differance between the content of Oracle's book and Google's book is irrelevant
As any programmer knows, you code against interfaces not implementations. And if you don't realize that declaring those interfaces take both effort and creativity then you probably aren't a very good programmer.
A heading in a book is just as much a contract about the content as a method signature is about the content of a method. It takes effort and creativity to produce a coherent outline for a book.
And as any (competent) programmer knows, the "interface" in "code against interfaces not implementations" is merely a homonym of the "interface" in "application programming interface".
> Google didn't just copy the "heading" java.lang.Math.max() they also copied the contract that calling this method should always return the bigger of the two arguments.
I would hope not but wouldn't be surprised if they are, at least in the presentation. The ranking and selection of snippets are original but ultimately machine-generated content, so I could see a court leaning either way.
> and likened the Java API’s to Charles Dickens and other literary works
Never, could have I ever predicted to one day see that as an actual excerpt from an article.
By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s
False dichotomy. Society can work on solving more than one problem at once.
Also, what happens to software impacts every other realm. Software moves your money, irrigates your crops, drives your car, and runs your pacemaker. It matters.
>By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s
It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical objects and towards the importance of pure information.
>Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem
Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source.
There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.
It's profoundly important to the U.S. as a whole. Creation of IP is the last thing that's going to be automated by robots. It's already been tremendously resistant to production being exported to China and India. We're already at the point where the primary product of the U.S. is IP in various forms (Apple designs the computers but they're manufactured in China).
What do you mean by "IP"? If it's "intellectual property" that strikes me (a non-lawyer) as a particularly vague and ill-defined concept. I personally find the idea of owning an idea to be risible: historically, important things have been invented or discovered multiple times, sometimes clearly independently. So, why should I as a citizen finance some monopolies that will be economically detrimental to me and to society as a whole? Seriously. I'm not pulling chains here. Economists are almost 100% against monopolies (although they often differ on what constitutes a monopoly), and "IP" is a state-supported monopoly. Why should we subject ourselves to it?
The traditional reason is to grant incentive for its creation in the first place. One primary example has been medical advances. With the benefit of a (temporary) monopoly on the sales of a new drug, the company has an incentive to create it in the first place. Perhaps we wouldn't have as many life saving advances without IP protection. A secondary reason is that it requires public disclosure. One alternative to patent protection is to keep a production method a trade secret. So companies, if they are sufficiently secretive, could have effective if not legally enforced monopolies due to such secrets. So is it worth the tradeoff of having IP protection?
COST: a time-limited monopoly; limited incremental innovation on derivatives of the protected work during the lifetime of the protection.
BENEFIT: potentially more innovative goods and services are created to begin with; the means and methods behind these innovations are publicly documented for future replication or derivative work .
I'm think it is worth the tradeoff both for copyright protection and patents in general. But the specific laws are certainly not optimal as currently written and enforced by the courts. Durations for both patents and copyright are too long. Plenty of things that are patentable should not be, due to them being too obvious, trivial, or just not appropriate for protection.
Also the remedy for infringement has multiple options. You could allow general infringement, at statutory royalty rates. I think Canada has experimented with this for copyright, and the US as standard (but private) arrangements for the licensing of music. You could require a fraction of any profits. These provide the monopoly rents, but not a monopolization of production and derivatives. We are still learning what the optimal tradeoffs are for society. I hope we have more experimentation on regulatory regimes to identify the best compromises.
I mean "IP" in the broadest sense. The iPhone is "designed by Apple in California" but everything is "made in China." Whatever information flows from California to China to enable that is IP. As to your second point: having a monopoly over a thing is different than having a monopoly over a market. All property rights are state-supported monopolies. The essence of trade is exchange of monopoly rights as to things. So it doesn't make any sense to say economists are categorically against monopolies.
Existing IP regimes aren't perfect, but appropriate protections for IP are fundamental to the prosperity of the United States. You're way better off as a Californian in a world where Chinese people have to pay tons of money to California for something they build domestically.
As we move away from jobs-as-sustenance and toward a new social model where sustenance and income come from a broader range of sources that do not so directly correlate to your time spent working... the respect for and ownership of intellectual property may very well be a central tenant to life in modern society.
It's not just about lawyers and multinationals dukeing it out.
Which of those problems do you think doesn't already have a solution? If not, which of those do you think isn't a perpetual problem which has been around in some form or another since the dawn of human civilization?
Reorganizing the world's economy away from physical works to intellectual ones is an entirely new problem and will be on the scale of the industrial revolution.
calling what I said "profoundly stupid" adds little to the discussion, and only stands to subvert my expression of frustration, which is where the sarcasm comes from. You may disagree, but you don't need to knock down what I said to do so.
Likewise, take a step back. Maybe take two. What our our priorities as a society, as a species? These two companies with loads of money and resources, battling it out over if API's are copyrightable. I'm not saying that's not a significant legal matter, I'm saying in context of everything else, it's squabble. It's part of a big circle jerk that companies play with each other in attempt to screw one another so they can make more money.
I guess the future really will be nothing but lawyers.
It's not squabble if you're an independent developer or a startup trying to create a new product.
There will be a lot more of those poor people you were talking about if APIs are allowed to be copyrighted. It will stifle innovation in the US, and drive talented programmers to either seek a different profession, or move to a country that isn't draconian.
That or it will be widely flaunted like jay walking or the tena of thousands other laws and regulations that are on the books and hardly ever enforced.
Yeah, I don't understand why this is a relatively minor story. This should be filling the front page of HN, on par with Jobs's death. If this ruling goes the wrong way, it will end software development as we know it, especially given the ridiculous length of copyright.
Any reimplementation of an API? Illegal. IBM compatible PCs? Illegal. Any emulator? Illegal. Binary-compatible reimplementations? Illegal.
(Reposting a question I asked in an earlier discussion, where I may have arrived too late for anyone to see it).
That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands.
What courts is this precedent for?
Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X.
For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out.
Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it had just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too.
So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling?
Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?
I believe the CAFC decision is not binding precedent for any court. If P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, even if there are patent claims as well (such that an appeal on a copyright issue would necessarily go to the CAFC), the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google is not binding precedent. Of course that does not mean that the district court would be likely to ignore the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google, but in principle it ought to be no more than persuasive, like any pertinent decision in a sibling circuit.
On the question in your last paragraph, where P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th circuit, and there are only appeals of copyright issues, the appeal goes to the CAFC by statute.
On that last part, so CAFC gets the case if it included patent claims, even if neither party is appealing any of the patent issues?
That raises the possibility of copyright plaintiffs tossing in a patent claim that they have no intention of trying to actually win on, just to make sure that they will get CAFC's view of copyright instead of the 9th Circuit's view.
The CAFC itself would be bound to apply 9th Circuit precedent, as it purported to do here. Again in principle, a prior copyright decision by the CAFC applying 9th Circuit law would not be binding precedent on a CAFC panel hearing some later copyright case arising out of the 9th Circuit.
Excuse me, non-American here, but a passage from an article linked within states[0]:
> The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a case, an influence which has caused the solicitor general to be dubbed the "tenth justice."
We are aware of the problem, but due to high call volume and a totally corrupt/captured/entrenched corporate & government bureaucracy, you may experience long wait times.
Third parties can generally file something called an "amicus brief" which is more or less "an opinion from a friend of the court."
The court takes this opinion into account, it's not that Oracle and Google aren't listened to, it's that the Federal government basically gets a chance to say what it thinks.
SG sometimes become supreme court justices. But more generally the lawyer a justice will hear from the most during any given period is most likely the current t SG.
... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies.
[1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and stakeholder dividends, because our VAT is 20%, mandatory contributions 46%, income tax 10-15%, land tax 5-10%, and laws are so circumvoluted that the tax accountant takes 45€ per paysheet per employee and charge about 2000€ yearly to the company. And the founder gets to spend >10% of his time on the phone with administrations or filling forms. I know the IRS of USA isn't much better, but I've lived in Australia and administrations make a difference on CEO time.
[2] I'm aware of that the French government provides benefits for startups like CRI (Crédit Impot Recherche), which basically funds the PhDs you hire, but it wastes paperwork pumping money from companies into companies, requires a person to manage the grant, and isn't socially fair since it advantages those with a PhD.
I could always blame TTIP agreements for advantaging Americans, but we, French people, tackle down our own companies on a massive scale.
French people, please don't answer "Hey man the CCI can help you for your paperwork if you fill in this form and post it to this address and fill the file they return and the RSI will take a levy of 0,015% for training (truth) and ... form ... and ... paper ... document... and... minitax... organisme social... excess... deductible for SMEs if you tick the box 5UV and ..." Please. I just wanted to hire and code, and the Australian PAYG paysheet is frigging awesome.
Well, you could always emigrate to Belgium: 33.99% corporate income tax, 37.84% social security contributions, 53.5% personal income tax most labour income above a cleaner's wage, 21% VAT, 10% real estate sales tax, 25% dividend tax, spectacular inheritance tax, combined with far too complex rules and regulations.
That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...
All of those carry caveats though. The effective corporate tax rate is 23.4% due to the various deductions, and the bigger you are the lower the percentage (which I find really unfair to small business, but it is the way it is). That personal income tax also includes county taxes, and you can choose to live somewhere that those taxes are near zero, so it can go down a lot depending on where you live. 21% VAT is pretty much standard across the EU anyway. And the inheritance tax in flanders is 9% for everything below 250.000 euro if you're in direct line of succession, high but not spectacular. Also, very low property taxes. Typically capital isn't taxed, only income is (from labor or capital). That's why despite such high rates of taxation there is a lot of capital in Belgium, because what you get (after taxes) you mostly can keep.
But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).
Where is your 46% coming from? Also, you might grossly underestimate how much of an absolute mess American taxes are to deal with. If you're complaining about paying your accountant 2000 euros a year...
Taxes are in the same ballpark for all western countries. The real burden isn't the financial load, it is the complexity. I had a dream that my US state could take over all forms of taxation and have a single payer system (ha!) Business, personal, income, property, federal, all of it, one form, filed electronically and done by the state. Done.
Are you asking what the 46% contributes to, or a source? It contributes to health/unemployment/poverty/old-age insurances and pensions. The source is most websites about LLCs ("SAS/SARL") in France, e.g. https://www.apce.com/pid811/cotisations-sociales.html?pid=81... - the first cell of the second table is worth a read, for the laugh.
"anyone who's written a standard C library was in violation of Kernighan & Ritchie's copyright"
K&R and Ken Thompson et al. were working for Bell Labs and assigned copyright to AT&T. AT&T cooperated with early open source programmers at Cal to produce UNIX software. The negotiations between Cal and AT&T produced a license from AT&T for UNIX and C as embodied in Berkeley UNIX. Berkeley BSD grants a license to anyone in the world to reproduce standard libraries and the rest of the UNIX system.
Thus anyone who writes a standard UNIX library has a solid license chain back to KR&T for the APIs regardless of the result of this lawsuit.
Now, the BIOS in your PC -- and the billion PC clones produced in the past 35 years -- becomes a criminal offense if the CAFC result is upheld. Quite a lot of other APIs that have been standardized under the laws as we understood them for the 50 years before CAFC reversed them soon become illegal forever.
But UNIX and its various flavors is fine.
Python, Perl, Ruby, C++, and C programmers should be fine as will be their standard libraries.
And we'll all adapt by not using proprietary APIs from now on. You'll have to be careful about code licenses and API licenses instead of just code licenses. It's a headache and a large one-time cost to the industry in libraries we'll lose forever but in the long run it'll be fine for programmers.
The real danger from the CAFC is the way they've been expanding patents. You can't escape from patents just by getting licenses or not copying others' work.
Still, the BSD license requires reproduction of the license text and copyright headers (and for a while, advertising on the package). I don't see those in many C libraries.
That's not quite as interesting a comparison as you might think [ed: or maybe it is, now that I've thought it through... ;-) ]. Eg, from the Introduction to the second edition of "The C Programming Language": "Appendix A contains a language reference manual. The official statement of the syntax and semantics of C is the ANSI Standard itself.".
Note that there's an ANSI standard for C -- and while I don't know what kind of license it is connected with off the top of my head -- it's very idea is to serve as a reference for implementers.
Note also, that if I remember correctly, the whole thing (Google vs Oracle) was tied to what Microsoft did with their "Java that wasn't quite java" -- and that what Google did was something similar: they took the API, but didn't make "a java" -- they made Dalvik/Dex etc -- which only sort-a-kinda was java.
As for "The C Programming Language", I can't find anything about license in my copy, and the copyright page doesn't exactly encourage re-use of the code-examples:
"Copyright 1988, 1978 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... yada yada yada"
So using some startling code such as "hello, world" -- as foundation for writing out something -- would probably not be legal. Even if the text does allude to the fact that a programmer is expected to draw upon the examples for inspiration.
I'm not sure that alone is enough to grant fair use.
It certainly seems that the examples in the book is similar to that in the java documentation -- and that neither gives an explicit license for use. Perhaps now AT&T owns everything, including Oracle?
And there's the problem. "IP" laws and customs will be vague enough that the rest of us will have to totally steer clear of any "IP" problems. It costs far too much to get the "probably" erased or the "not legal" reversed.
Litigation is for gamblers or aristocrats. Strict "IP" will only lead to less innovation, higher prices, and the creation of a semi-aristocracy, the "rightsholders".
Oh, to be clear, I think this verdict is pretty bad (as if things weren't muddy enough already). I began writing the comment/looking through K&R and realized that in this particular case -- one might not have a clear-cut legal right to use the example code. Even if that is clearly the intent of the authors.
Although, I'd be surprised if there haven't been rulings on similar cases before. Either way - the code from a text book, and code from technical documentation are probably not the same under the law.
That doesn't mean I don't think it's silly to hold APIs to be copyright-able -- I just think the two questions are different: 1) Is sample code provided for the purpose of re-use, fair-use (or something equivalent)? and 2) Are APIs copyrightable?
When I wrote the original comment, I was actually thinking about the description of the API of the standard library that is in Appendix B of the Second Edition, containing such copyrightable creative expressions as
Maybe we should change the standard licences - GPL, MIT, etc. - to include a caveat "free to use without restriction... except by companies known as, or ever known as, Oracle Corporation"...
There are a few more exceptions, that come to my mind: Military, Intelligence Agencies and their subcontractors, TBTF-Banks, Disney, Sony ... ahrr and the list goes on
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" -- Article I, Section 8, US Constitution (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_trans...)
This is the exact opposite of promoting progress, and this type of behavior needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds. This is so far beyond what the Constitution authorizes Congress to oversee with respect to patent and copyright law that the specifics of the case are almost meaningless. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that anyone would stop developing APIs or turn them into trade secrets unless they can be copyrighted. 40+ years of sharing and software development prove otherwise.
Time for the Federal Circuit and Justice Department to wake up, or for there to be an investigation into bribery and corruption in East Texas and DC. Preferably both.
No suprise here ---
1) Google won the first case with Alsup. This demonstrates that some lower courts can have a better understanding of the law and are willing to spend time applying logic to these things.
2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get. The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too. So, even if it goes to the Supreme Court, we're pretty much guaranteed Oracle will win that too.
See, the whole problem of this case rests in that you have to "spend time" and "apply logic" to agree with Google's position. Which, pretty much throws out any hope of getting a "higher court" (or higher-anybody) to adopt Google's stance on the issue.
Actually the poster "tajen" pretty much hit the nail on the head for this issue -- essentially, adopting Google's stance unfortunately requires a degree of competence and logical commitment beyond the comprehension of most higher officials. So, even if this goes to the Supreme Court Oracle has this case pretty much won...
> 2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get.
I don't know that that's the case; even if we assume that the CAFC is wrong from the perspective of application of the law (rather than merely correctly applying the law to reach an outcome that we don't like), certainly, lots of observers think that the CAFC is an especially problematic court among Courts of Appeal, and even on the issues that it specializes in (which copyright is not one of; Oracle v. Google got there instead of the 9th Circuit because of patent issues in the case, even though the thing we're all focused on is a copyright issue.)
So, I don't think that "the CAFC messed this up", even if taken as gospel, necessarily demonstrates a relation between "level" of court and competence.
> The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too.
Since the DoJ isn't a higher court than the CAFC, I don't see how you can reasonably say that.
DOJ is not a court but it is a "high official" (or "official body"). What I was stating was that the "higher you go" -- in terms of official government bodies, whether they're courts, or something else -- the less competent I would expect them to be.
You can simply say,
1) "Oracle owns Java"
2) "APIs are part of Java"
3) "Google uses Java APIs"
4) Therefore, "Google uses something Oracle owns" so Oracle should win this case
Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance. But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue? Deep enough to understand Google's position?
> You can simply say, 1) "Oracle owns Java" 2) "APIs are part of Java" 3) "Google uses Java APIs" 4) Therefore, "Google uses something Oracle owns" so Oracle should win this case
You could, but neither CAFC nor DoJ did, so that's irrelevant.
> Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance.
Or you could apply deeper logic and still uphold Oracle's stance. Now, I tend to think the District Court decision here was more correct than the CAFC decision (or the DoJ position), but I don't think as a legal decision its as clearly correct as some people would like to claim -- even though its also the outcome I prefer independent of what is correct under the current law.
> But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue?
Fairly deeply on the legal side -- that's what appellate courts exist to do, and they are generally fairly good at it (though they do fail spectacularly at times, but not worse than trial courts, though with higher courts they get more attention for it) -- perhaps less so on the factual side (again, this is by design -- and why appellate courts often resolve legal disputes and send the factual matters back to the trial courts to resolve given the legal clarification.)
> Deep enough to understand Google's position?
I don't think the CAFC or DoJ failed to understand Google's position. Disagreement isn't the same thing as lack of understanding.
Why not let it happen? Why not just completely destroy everyone's understanding of how permission to use certain types of code work, and then force everyone to just abandon the US copyright system for software completely? Let this happen and just let it destroy the system from the inside out.
Seems ridiculous; my analogy: organization of volume of books; or classification of library; I can use any classification. I can go to Library of Congress; copy they way they organize their books; and implement same in my library. Why can't you do that with Open Source code?
I know this has been said a lot of times already but I don't think we can say this enough. If Oracle wins, this will set a terrible precedent for software development. If any software company deserves to be qualified as evil, it is Oracle without a doubt.
Can someone give the background of why Google did what they did? Did they want to block Java compatibility or was that a side effect of some other objective?
Android started back when Sun was still independent and they failed to formalize the IP relationship with Sun. Google could have nabbed Sun if they wanted, but it was of no value to them when Oracle swooped in.
What happened of Judge Aslop [1]? As a foreigner, he's the only ever positive story I have heard about the American judicial system, since he was in charge of the Google vs Oracle trial, and he reproduced code himself to understand what was so unique about it. In fact, he decided there was only way to code some things, and ruled that the very small method everyone was arguing against can't be patented/copyrighted. And he ruled Oracle's API couldn't be copyrighted. So do this contradict his ruling?
Yes. As mentioned in the linked article, the Federal Circuit court overturned Alsup's ruling. The Alsup ruling came from a district court, and the Federal Circuit has the authority to overturn it. From there, the question can go on to the US Supreme Court.
""[Google]'s Section 102(b) argument also suffers from a broader flaw." (this sentence transitions from the Administration's rejection of Google's suggestion that declaring code is inherently more functional and less expressive than implementing code to the DoJ's agreement with Oracle's lawyers on the purpose of Section 102(b))"
That Google would be in the right by copying the declaring code of 27(!) different namespaces is nothing but crazy.
The .NET standard libraries are part of the CLI which is a part of ISO/IEC 23271:2012, a standard. I have no idea when it comes to the EC2 API.
Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?
> Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?
How do you think compatible API implementations have been done until now?
If they are done by copying someone elses work without permission then by copyright infringement. If done by implementing a standard or through a license etc. then no harm is done.
Do you think that I should be allowed to steal the declaring code of someone elses proprietary solution and pawn of as my own?
I don't care how involved he is in the case, I read his writing and I found it to be illuminating -- far more so than anything else I'd read on the subject.
You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.
Mueller has a history of doing an excellent job working things that aren't actually reasonable to informed parties that seem illuminating to people that aren't informed. It's actually a fairly key skill for a professional propagandist. I haven't actually read the piece on question here, but appearing illuminating and actually being deceptive propaganda are not mutually exclusive traits.
The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.