23 ms·

Jury in Oracle v. Google finds in Google's favour

1832 points by LukeB_UK 10y ago

spelunker 10y ago
Is this legit? If so, thank goodness.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-wins-trial-against-oracle-as-jury-finds-android-is-fair-use/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-wins-trial...
phasmantistes 10y ago
I'd also just like to give huge props to Sarah Jeong for keeping up such a high-quality live stream of tweets over the course of the entire trial. That's reporting done right.
- toufka 10y ago
  Yep Sarah Jeong @sarahjeong, and Parker Higgins @xor (of EFF) both did great jobs in communicating about the trial. They both provided an account along with some context. Sarah's reporting: https://storify.com/sarahjeong https://storify.com/sarahjeong Parker's story: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/stakes-are-high-oracle-v-google-public-has-already-lost-big https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/stakes-are-high-oracle...
- rplnt 10y ago
  > tweets > reporting done right I'm not sure. Surely it would only benefit her if she weren't limited by 140 characters, right?
  - untog 10y ago
    That's one way of looking at it. But using a medium where people expect short, frequent updates rather than a 10,000 word article has its advantages.
    - rplnt 10y ago
      There's a wide spectrum between a 10k word article and not being limited.
      - k__ 10y ago
        The realtime feeds I see on other news sites aren't much longer than 140 characters. So it was okay to choose Twitter, I think.
  - joshkpeterson 10y ago
    Well she also publishes stories on motherboard so what are you trying to say exactly...?
  - c_c_c 10y ago
    No. You're allowed more than 140 characters because you can tweet more than once. The real time updates were invaluable.
    - toyg 10y ago
      How so? This isn't something where you'll have to decide in a split-second wether to take to the streets in response to this or that development. You could argue that there is some value for stock traders (and tbh, given the result, even for them it's basically the same as it was before), but that's about it. It's just the "breaking news" frenzy applied to social media. Nothing to celebrate, imho.
      - c_c_c 10y ago
        Sorry but this was an example of how a real time feed on twitter can be informative in a way that a long form piece could not. A summary of the trial would not be the same as the minutiae that she was able to convey. It was done really well. If all you get is long form from New Yorker or Le Monde, you're missing out.
    - rplnt 10y ago
      Not having a limit does not mean you can't post real time updates. But having the limit means you sometimes can't post even a single coherent sentence.
Analemma_ 10y ago
Now we have to hope this doesn't get overturned by a Circuit judge like it did before. Still, this is excellent news.
- davidw 10y ago
  I'll admit to not really understanding the path this has taken through the courts - I haven't been following that closely though.
  - phasmantistes 10y ago
    A short summary: * Oracle sues Google on copyright grounds. * Case is overseen by Judge Alsup, who taught himself Java in order to understand the technical merits of the case. Case is split into two phases: copyright and patents. * A jury finds Google to be infringing on copyright, but deadlocks on the fair-use defense. The jury finds Google to be non-infringing on all patents. * Judge Alsup breaks the jury's deadlock on copyright by ruling that APIs are not copyrightable in the first place. * Oracle appeals the patent claim, Google simultaneously appeals the copyright claim (it wasn't 100% in their favor). * The Federal Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) hears the case due to the patent portion. It overturns Alsup's decision, declaring that APIs are in fact copyrightable. It remands the case back down to Judge Alsup. * Google petitions the Supreme Court to hear the case instead, but the Court declines the request. * Judge Alsup oversees a second trial, this time solely on the fair-use merits. * The jury finds that Google's use of the APIs indeed falls under fair use.
    - wtallis 10y ago
      The Federal Circuit isn't the Ninth Circuit, and that's really the whole problem. The Federal Circuit is the special-purpose patent appeals court. For a case like this where they were hearing the appeal because there were patent claims, they are supposed to treat the non-patent issues in the manner of the local circuit (9th). The Federal Circuit has a history of ruling in favor of broader intellectual property rights and being periodically reined in by the Supreme Court. They do it for patents, and when Oracle uses a losing patent claim to get copyright issues before the Federal Circuit, they rule for expanding copyright. If Oracle hadn't included patent claims, the appeal would have gone before the Ninth Circuit and probably lost. The Federal Circuit did a farcical job of applying Ninth Circuit copyright precedent, especially in contrast to the thorough job Alsup did.
jcdavis 10y ago
What is the room for appeals here? This is a massive ruling, heres to hoping it stands
- revelation 10y ago
  This is already the retrial, I'm pretty sure it's dead now.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Nope. Oracle can appeal to the Federal Circuit.
    - revelation 10y ago
      Of course they can. But appeals typically have little chance of success, and a case that has already gone all up the appeal chain once and had a complete retrial? No way.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        It hasn't had a complete retrial. In the first trial, the judge (Alsup) ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted. Google also had a fair-use defense, but didn't waste time on the trial with that, because Alsup had already ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. Oracle lost that trial. Oracle appealed, and at the appeals court won a ruling that APIs could be copyrighted. The case got sent back down for a trial that was only about the fair-use defense, not a complete retrial.
- bitmapbrother 10y ago
  Oracle can appeal all they want to the CAFC. Overturning a unanimous jury verdict is a herculean task.
  - ars 10y ago
    Am I correct that they can only appeal an incorrect application of the law, but not the facts of the case? (Including the facts the Jury has decided.)
EddieRingle 10y ago
Hopefully soon we can stop focusing on legalities and get back to building cool stuff.
- seangrant 10y ago
  When's the last time Oracle has built "cool stuff"?
  - bydo 10y ago
    America's Cup?
  - glibgil 10y ago
    April 28th, 2016 according to vagrant on my Mac https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog At least I think it is pretty cool (and very gracious of Oracle)
    - wtallis 10y ago
      You're not exactly setting the bar very high for Oracle. VirtualBox was mostly GPL'd before its developer was bought by Sun, which was later bought by Oracle. Saying that it's "very gracious" of Oracle to not kill a successful project or fire all its developers makes it sound like you've been brainwashed under an oppressive tyranny.
      - glibgil 10y ago
        You're a special kind of ingrate. Oracle spends a great deal of its treasure on open source software. They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves. You have no leg to stand on. Oracle is doing a nice thing for the engineering community. They don't have to, but they do. It is nice of them. You are being rude
        wtallis 10y ago
        > "They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves." Net cost? Most certainly not. That's not how Oracle works at all. Saying that they aren't entirely opposed to participating in mutually beneficial arrangements is still setting the bar pretty damn low and is not a distinction worthy of any praise.
brotherjerky 10y ago
This is fantastic news!
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Great news to a degree. It still means APIs can be copy-written which is a bit unfortunate in my opinion. But they won on fair use which is still a victory. Anyways I wonder how long this is going to keep going on for as I'm assuming Oracle will appeal.
Cyph0n 10y ago
Great news! This is a win for us software devs :) I'd like to note that Ars Technica's coverage of the trial has been excellent throughout.
- Zenith77 10y ago
  No it's not. It effectively means I can copy code without respect to the original author's rights, slap a new license on it, and call it a day. As long as it's under the guise of some higher ideal of software development -- which we know from historical accounts this was definitely not the case.
  - zardeh 10y ago
    What? This case had literally nothing to do with copying code.
    - Zenith77 10y ago
      You do realize how this case got to the court it's in, right? So yes, it most definitely isn't about copying code.
      - zardeh 10y ago
        >So yes, it most definitely isn't about copying code. Exactly?
VeejayRampay 10y ago
Nelson Muntz would rejoice at this verdict. Oracle's claim was laughable.
rayiner 10y ago
These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. It's a somewhat surprising result, because two of the factors weigh heavily against Google (it's a commercial work, and was important to Android gaining developer market-share). Oracle's strategy going forward, both in post-trial motions and in any subsequent appeal, will be based on arguing that no rational jury could have applied these factors to the undisputed facts of the case and concluded that the fair use test was met. It's also not a particularly satisfying result for anybody. If API's are copyrightable, then I can't think of a better case for protecting them than in this one, where Google created a commercial product for profit and there was no research or scientific motivation. It wasn't even really a case (like say, Samba) where copying was necessary to interoperate with a closed, proprietary system. Davlik isn't drop-in compatible with the JVM anyway. That makes Oracle's win on the subject matter issue basically a pyrrhic victory for anyone looking to protect their APIs. They're protectable, but can't be protected in any realistic scenario. And if you're in the camp that believes APIs should not be protected, this precedent--if it stands--means that you'll have to shoulder the expense of going to trial on the fair use issue before winning on the merits.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Would that be like Oracle arguing jury nullification? It seems that the case law on nullification is that the jury's verdict is the definition unless vacated by procedural error. Thoughts?
  - rayiner 10y ago
    It's the opposite, in that instead of the jury overruling the judge on law (normally the province of the judge), the judge overrules the jury on the ultimate factual question of liability (normally the province of the jury). The required showing is accordingly exacting (though hardly impossible to meet in practice): no rational jury could have reached the same conclusion.
koolba 10y ago
Wow. I suddenly have a lot more faith in the courts and juries to land sane verdicts in technology trials. Still sad that it takes a billion dollar company to be able to stand up to this (as anybody smaller would be crushed by the trial expense) but let's celebrate it none the less. Any lawyers around? I wonder if Google can claim legal expenses back from Oracle.
- dctoedt 10y ago
  Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/505 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/505
  - koolba 10y ago
    > Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] I think that'd be good for the ecosystem as it'd send a message that there will be consequence for pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
    - throwawaykeno 10y ago
      I don't think it's fair to call this law suit frivolous. From a developer perspective, the ideal and just end result has always seemed rather obvious. However, the multi-year history of this case demonstrates the correct legal answer not so obvious, at least from a legal perspective. For example, settling the issue on fair use was definitely not how most people thought/hoped this would shake out way back in the beginning of the law suit(s).
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        If I learned one thing from the SCO mess, it's that a high-powered law firm can take absolutely no case and make it last at least a decade.
      - sounds 10y ago
ShaneBonich 10y ago
That was expected. Happy for Google.
nabaraz 10y ago
My favourite part of the trial was when the judge told Oracle that a high schooler could write rangeCheck[1]. [1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/1612228/judge-to-oracle-a-high-schooler-could-write-rangecheck https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/1612228/judge...
- phasmantistes 10y ago
  That was from the first time around in this trial, before it was overturned at the Federal Circuit level and sent back to Judge Alsup for a retrial.
- untog 10y ago
  My favourite part: Movement to a few minutes of terse explanations, including what the acronym GNU stands for: GNU is Not Unix. “The G part stands for GNU?” Alsup asked in disbelief. “Yes,” said Schwartz on the stand. “That doesn’t make any sense,” http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerds-are-getting-owned http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerd...
  - legohead 10y ago
    Lesson 1: recursion Lesson 2: See Lesson 1
  - typon 10y ago
    Wait till they hear about mutually recursive acronyms like GNU HURD.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    I never realized how entertaining this trial was. Schwartz: "Back in 2009, Android WAS lame." Google atty: "Move to strike, your honor!" https://twitter.com/xor/status/730456825649188865 https://twitter.com/xor/status/730456825649188865
    - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
      Yer, it was absolutely hilarious. They had to get a tech guy in to open Java files on a computer. They didn't have an IDE installed on there and there were complaints that there were too many folders!
suyash 10y ago
Today is a sad day for Silicon Valley. Our legal process has demonstrated how incompetent it is when it comes to Technology IP protection.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Today is a wonderful day for Silicon Valley. Our legal process has demonstrated that it can learn and improve when it comes to Technology.
- solotronics 10y ago
  How so? My understanding was that Oracle was suing Google over the use of an API. This seems quite unreasonable to me but that could be due to my tech background and lack of legal knowledge.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    While I don't really agree with the OP, I totally understand the sentiment. It's really an acute issue between legal copyright and the new reality of modern computing. It used to be that copyright sustained our industries. Pottery, Pattern designs on fabric, and later music and films. In the modern world however, it seems positively damaging, with the likes of China, with no respect for IP and copyright rocketing ahead, most of the innovation happening in the west is in ways to bypass it, GNU is Not UNIX, Lame ain't an MP3 Encoder... and the old guard that depended on the old way falling ever further behind. In the days of getting material simply by asking a computer to fetch what you want (and nothing more than a few watts of electricity being consumed to do so) copyright simply doesn't make sense in any respect. But I suspect that opinion is just as unwelcome as the OPs.
    - stsp 10y ago
      Additional reading material: http://questioncopyright.org/learn http://questioncopyright.org/learn
- floatalong 10y ago
  Are you referring to Oracle's behavior? I would agree that while it's a glorious day, nonetheless the verdict is a chilling reminder of the abuse of IP.
pavpanchekha 10y ago
This is possibly my best-case scenario. APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court), and this seems reasonable, since some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits. But implementing them is fair use, preserving the utility of APIs for compatibility. Great news!
- halo 10y ago
  If other countries follow USSC's lead in declaring APIs as copyrightable, many of which have far looser fair use rights than the US, then this could create a lot of headaches, especially since this seems like a very loose interpretation of the US's already loose fair-use laws.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    The USSC hasn't ruled on copyrightability (they still might in this case, and it's anyone's guess how they would.)
    - oceanswave 10y ago
      The proper acronym is SCOTUS.
- pfg 10y ago
  > APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court) My understanding is that they refused to hear the case at the time. Is that, legally speaking, the same thing as agreeing with the circuit court, or could they have just refused to hear the case for some other reason (e.g. because they wanted to see the ruling on fair use first)?
  - rincebrain 10y ago
    It is not the same as agreeing with the lower court - AIUI if they heard it and ruled, the scope of the decision for purposes of precedent would be* "every court" (though not necessarily every case), while declining to hear it does not change the scope or outcome of the prior ruling. * - as with everything in the legal system, there are exceptions and fuzzy lines, and IANAL.
mythz 10y ago
Whew, Oracle's lawyers and blind greed doesn't get to destroy interoperability for the entire Tech Industry. But the fact that Oracle could get this close and spin deceit to a non-technical Jury to decide whether using API declarations from an OSS code-base would in some universe entitle them to a $9B payday, is frightening.
- epalmer 10y ago
  > But the fact that Oracle could get this close and spin deceit to a non-technical Jury to decide whether using API declarations from an OSS code-base would in some universe entitle them to a $9B payday, is frightening. Yes this was really a close one. I am breathing a sigh of relief now.
- farcical_tinpot 10y ago
  They can appeal, but it is going to be very hard for them to get any revenue out of this court action now. That's what this would have been - revenue.
shmerl 10y ago
Congratulations! It's a pity that previous decision declared APIs copyrightable. This never should have happened. But at least fair use worked out. I wonder though how universal that ruling would be. Is any reimplementation of APIs going to be fair use, and if not, what are the criteria?
gaius 10y ago
Great, the ad company beat the company that makes actual products. Welcome to the new Silly Valley.
cm3 10y ago
So, APIs are still thought as copyright'able and that was a different trial, right? Now Google was ruled okay to use that single, small function, or what was this about? A little more info would be nice for those who aren't following this closely.
- anarres 10y ago
  In 2012, court rules Java APIs are not copyrightable. In 2014, that decision was appealed and overruled, declaring Java APIs copyrightable. The case was sent back to determine if Google's reimplementing APIs was "fair use" of copyrighted material. Now we saw that trial, where jury ruled on fair use. It was fair use. (nothing to do with any small function, that was in 2012)
zerocrates 10y ago
See, as ever, Florian Mueller for a... different perspective: http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/oracle-v-google-jury-finds-in-favor-of.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/oracle-v-google-jury-find...
- Oletros 10y ago
  His level of insanity and hatred is beyond belief
  - kstrauser 10y ago
    No. He's a paid consultant to Oracle and Microsoft (see: http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-to-google-which-bloggers-did-you-pay-off-2012-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-to-google-which-blogge...) and his employers get their money's worth.
    - vesinisa 10y ago
      He still seems like a sociopath. Taking money to poison communities does not glorify it.
      - kstrauser 10y ago
        I didn't say he's not scummy, just that he's not insane. It's my belief that he's get paid well to say scummy things, which is rational if not tasteful.
  - jshevek 10y ago
    Your statement seemed hyperbolic until I followed the link and skimmed a handful of posts. He does indeed come across as someone consumed by hatred to the level of insanity. Why wouldn't anyone link to him? Its like linking to the Westboro baptist people in a discussion about Christian theology.
    - yohui 10y ago
blacktulip 10y ago
Excuse me here but I have to ask. Is this final? Because I've read that Oracle won the case some time ago.
- pfg 10y ago
  The district court originally ruled that APIs weren't copyrightable. The appeals court overturned that decision, ruling that APIs were copyrightable, but that it could be fair use. The case went back to the district court for that point, and the jury now decided that it was in fact fair use.
  - simcop2387 10y ago
    Yep, and that fair use argument is why the SCOTUS declined to hear it at the time. Be interesting to see if it goes back that way or if Oracle decides it's not going to get anything from doing so.
- dave2000 10y ago
  This is the appeal against the appeal. You can guess what will happen next.
crispyambulance 10y ago
Perhaps the jury was not as clueless as some here were assuming?
grizzles 10y ago
Apis are still copyrightable according to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. That's not great, and I hope Congress does something about it for the other languages (eg. C#/.NET) that haven't yet been whitelisted as fair to use by the judicial system.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mark_l_watson 10y ago
I remember that afternoon deserts served in Google restaurants when I worked there were very tasty - I hope everyone is celebrating with a good snack :-) Seriously, I think this is a good verdict. I think that Oracle has been doing a good job sheparding Java, but this law suit really seemed to me to be too much of a money grab.
davis 10y ago
If you found Sarah's coverage of the trial useful, she is accepting payments on PayPal since she was doing it with her own money: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/731687243916529665 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/731687243916529665
- xyzzy4 10y ago
  It costs her money to post on Twitter?
  - cheald 10y ago
    It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - xenihn 10y ago
      She's strengthening her personal brand and potentially gaining access to new clients for future work. I have absolutely no problem with her asking for donations, but let's not be disingenuous :)
      - cheald 10y ago
        Agreed, but brand doesn't put food on the table!
      - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
        Ahhhh, yes, the 'giving exposure' argument.
        xenihn 10y ago
        Did you somehow misconstrue my post as an argument that she should not be paid?
grellas 10y ago
Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree with this because they grew up in a digital age where copyright was seen as simply an unnecessary impediment to the otherwise limitless and basically cost-free capacity we all have to reproduce digital products in our modern world and hence an impediment to the social good that would come from widespread sharing of such products for free. Yet, as much as people believe that information ought to be free, it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would certainly work to rob those who may have spent countless hours developing such works of the commercial value of their efforts. I will grant that this is a social policy judgment on which the law could come down on either side. I stand with the idea of copyright protection. Even granting the correctness of copyright as a body of law that protects certain property interests, there are still many abuses in the way it is implemented and enforced. Copyright terms have been extended to the point of absurdity, and certainly well beyond what is needed to give the original author an opportunity to gain the fruits of his or her labor. Enforcement statutes are heavy-handed and potentially abusive, especially as they apply to relatively minor acts of infringement by end-users. And the list goes on. The point is that many people are fed up with copyright law as currently implemented and, when there is widespread discontent in society over the effects of a law, the time is ripe for a change. I believe this is where copyright law is today. The Bono law may have slipped through Congress with nary a dissent in its day but this will not happen again, whatever the lobbying power of Disney and others. And the same is true for the scope of copyright law as it applies to APIs. Ours is a world of digital interoperability. People see and like its benefits. Society benefits hugely from it. Those who are creatively working to change the world - developers - loath having artificial barriers that block those benefits and that may subject them to potential legal liabilities to boot. Therefore, the idea that an API is copyrightable is loathsome to them. And it is becoming increasingly so to the society as a whole. The copyright law around APIs had developed in fits and starts throughout the 1980s and 1990s, primarily in the Ninth Circuit where Silicon Valley is located. When Oracle sued Google in this case, that law was basically a mess. Yet Judge Alsup, the judge assigned to this case, did a brilliant synthesis in coming up with a coherent and logically defensible legal justification for why APIs in the abstract should not be protected by copyright. He did this by going back to the purpose of copyright, by examining in detail what it is that APIs do, and by applying the law in light of its original purpose. The result was simple and compelling (though the judicial skill it took to get there was pretty amazing). Legal decisions are binding or not depending on the authority of the court making them and on whether a particular dispute in under the authority of one court or another when it is heard. The decision by Judge Alsup is that of a trial judge and hence not legally binding as precedent on any other judge. It could be hugely persuasive or influential but no court is bound to follow it in a subsequent case. The Federal Circuit decision that reversed Judge Alsup and held APIs to be copyrightable is not that of a trial judge and has much more precedential effect. Yet it too has limited authority. The Federal Circuit Court does not even have copyright as its area of jurisdiction. It is a specialty court set up to hear patent appeals. The only reason it heard this case was because the original set of claims brought by Oracle included patent claims and this became a technical ground by which the Federal Circuit Court gained jurisdiction to hear the appeal. But there are many other Federal Circuit courts in the U.S. and the effect of the Federal Circuit Court decision concerning copyrights is not binding on them. There is also the U.S. Supreme Court. It has the final authority and its decisions are binding on all lower federal courts as concerns copyright law. The point is that the battle over this issue is not over. It is true that the Federal Circuit decision was a large setback for those who believe APIs should not be subject to copyright. Yet there remains that whole issue of social resistance and that is huge. It will undoubtedly take some time but the law can and does change in ways that tend to reflect what people actually think and want, at least in important areas. No one has a stake in seeing that Oracle be awarded $9 billion in damages just because it bought Sun Microsystems and found an opportunity through its lawyers to make a big money grab against Google. But a lot of people have a stake in keeping software interoperability open and free and many, many people in society benefit from this. Nor is this simply an issue of unsophisticated people fighting the shark lawyers and the big corporations. Many prominent organizations such as EFF are in the mix and are strongly advocating for the needed changes. Thus, this fight over APIs will continue and I believe the law will eventually change for the better. In this immediate case, I believe the jury likely applied common sense in concluding unanimously that, notwithstanding Oracle's technical arguments, the use here was in fact benign given the ultimate purposes of copyright law. I leave the technical analysis to others but, to me, this seems to be a microcosm of the pattern I describe above: when something repels, and you have a legitimate chance to reject it, you do. Here, the idea of fair use gave the jury a big, fat opening and the jury took it.
tostitos1979 10y ago
Despite the win, I think it would have been far better for the computer industry if Google had bought Sun. Unlike other companies with crap (IMHO ... Nokia, Motorola), Sun actually had stuff of value. This is a lesson that geeks get but I'm not sure MBAs do or will ever get.
- lallysingh 10y ago
  Agreed. Google may have made a better steward of Java than Oracle. But I don't know what tech Google would've directly benefitted from. They could've ported dtrace and zfs (and changed licenses) to Linux. But they'd have to keep all those support contracts going, which is a pain. That's more Oracle-side.
- a3n 10y ago
  Yeah. Thank you Sun, for ... everything, including employing the people you employed.
  - dguaraglia 10y ago
    Interesting that you mention that. When I was back in university (early 2000s) there were a few "big companies" to work for. If you cared about having the perks, the money and a cool office, you wanted to work for Microsoft. If you were more of a reclusive neckbeard with a love for the more arcane aspects of computing and networking (like I was), you wanted to work for Sun. It was seen as the place where you'd be free to work on cool research projects rather than (god forbid!) consumer software. That's where the luminaries were. Of course, even back then nobody wanted to work for IBM or HP. Heh.
    - tostitos1979 10y ago
      At IBM, the Watson, Almaden and other research labs used to be the place to be.
- farcical_tinpot 10y ago
  I often wondered why Google didn't. Simply owning Java alone and heading off this inevitable nonsense would have been enough reason. This kind of legal stuff is really the only way Sun were going to make money from Java. Heaven knows, Java has continued in spite of Sun, not because of them. The trouble is, they would have had to keep a lot of legacy crap going like Solaris and SPARC which probably wouldn't have appealed to them. Sun was, and still is, haemorrhaging cash.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Oracle will likely appeal, but they'll lose again. Overturning a unanimous jury verdict is very difficult.
satysin 10y ago
So is this really over for good now? Can Oracle appeal and drag this on for another decade?
musesum 10y ago
> "For me, declaring code is not code," Page said. Unless, of course, the declaring code is declaring declaring code, as in Prolog and its ilk.
jrochkind1 10y ago
thank god.
steffenfrost 10y ago
Would swizzling methods violate copyright?
chatmasta 10y ago
What impact does this have on reverse engineering private APIs and reimplementing them? And selling those reimplementations? Can I reverse engineer the private API of a mobile app, then implement my own client to talk to its servers? What if I create my own "bridge" API to talk to the private API? Can I then sell access to the bridge API, allowing developers to use the private API of the app through my service? And how does this relate to, e.g. running private world of warcraft servers with modded code that allows purchasing in-game items? (See http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-private-server-lawsuit/ http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-private-server-lawsuit/)
- coldpie 10y ago
  These kinds of questions are why this court case is so incredibly disastrous. Oracle has really done humanity an enormous disservice here, and any clients of theirs should immediately sever contracts in return for their blatant attempt to destroy software development. I'm not fucking exaggerating. If you thought software patents were bad, Oracle just unleashed a whole new level of hell.
  - chatmasta 10y ago
    I'm not sure if you misread my questions or I misread your answer. I'm asking about new opportunities this precedent allows, not existing ones it forbids. For example, the private WoW server case was ruled in favor of Blizzard. With this new precedent, would a court come to the same conclusion?
    - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
      The OP certainly did answer your questions and since you asked the questions you did you probably already know the answers ;-).
      - chatmasta 10y ago
        Haha, cheers. I'm not quite ready to commit to a ;-) just yet however.
jhh 10y ago
What I don't understand about this: Why didn't Google/Android use Java under the Open Source license under which it has been provided. Wouldn't that have saved all the trouble?
- icebraining 10y ago
  Probably because that would force them and anyone extending Android to license their extensions under the GPL. Phone OEMs would probably keep away from that can of worms.
- anarres 10y ago
  When Google started Android (2005ish, iirc), OpenJDK didn't exist yet.
  - jhh 10y ago
    Well that's a simple and convincing answer. Thanks.
- farcical_tinpot 10y ago
  OpenJDK either didn't exist or was in its infancy. Also, Oracle created a lot of confusion in that they tried to argue that even Apache Harmony was in violation. Also, there were a lot of third party drivers and software they couldn't use the GPL with. That has now largely disappeared.
ChrisLomont 10y ago
This is 100% inaccurate That story leaves out significant details, and his description of the reason is wrong. He leaves out significant prior sources and reasons, to the point your statement "It was not created to help artists or whoever" is simply wrong. Wikipedia provides a far better history with extensive sources [1]. Note for example the section "Early Developments" where they list precursors to anything in your source as having significant components of individual and author rights. Note also in the US copyright law was started by author guilds wanting author protection, and the first federal copyright act in 1790 was about protection for authors, not for printers. This was an extension of many states laws that had passed author protections. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law
- belorn 10y ago
  Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is actively discourage by Wikipedia project itself and by basically every university and research body in existence. The Early Developments section you talk about is about the concept of copyright as it exist today, rather than the history of copyright law as it was made. The French law, while tangential, followed a different path and focus heavily on the concept of moral right, concept which does not explicitly exist in the US copyright law. US law focused instead on statutory monopolies, and loosely match that of the French commercial right that authors was granted. Authors moral rights, as the existed in French copyright law, was instead weakly incorporated into libel laws. You claim that the US copyright law was started by authors guild, but three states had already enacted copyright statutes prior to the Continental Congress resolution. Where is your evidence that author protection was the intention behind the law makers of the time, which goes in rather stark contrast to every other aspect and the final text which focuses on the commercial aspects and not the rights of the authors. If the US copyright law was derrived from the French law, why is there no concept of "authors moral right" as there is in many EU countries to this day?
  - ChrisLomont 10y ago
    >Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source... Which is why you can check the references. When the article linked above about copyright is clearly coming from an anti-copyright source, and does not mention multiple important things Wikipedia does, I think any intelligent person realizes the Wikipedia source is more credible. As to overall accuracy of Wikipedia, many, many studies show it is quite accurate. Google and read the evidence. >You claim that the US copyright law was started by authors guild It's not my claim - Wikipedia sourced it. Since you don't like it, here [3] are some details with names and dates you can check, and here [4] is a paper titled "The Anti-Monopoly Origins of the Patent and Copyright Clause" with significant details. >three states had already enacted copyright statutes prior to the Continental Congress resolution "The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War." [1] And.... "Twelve states passed copyright laws prior to the work of the Continental Congress. Delaware chose not to pass a copyright law." [2] Here [2] is the text of the 1790 Copyright Act. It is completely about protecting author rights - every single section details this. The word author occurs 21 times in a page and a half. For example, (cutting out wordy clauses - go read the original if you doubt this) Section 1 - "the author...shall have the sole right ... of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending..." Section 2 - "any person .. without the consent of the author...shall forfeit all and every sheet and item.. and pay the sum of fifty cents for every sheet..." Section 6 - "any person .. who shall print ... without consent ... of the author.. shall be liable to suffer and pay ... all damages.." >the final text which focuses on the commercial aspects and not the rights of the authors I have no idea how you arrived at this statement. I just cited the law which clearly, in every section, enumerates authors rights. Care to cite this "final text" which does not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 [2] http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf [3] http://eduscapes.com/bookhistory/intellectualproperty/4.htm http://eduscapes.com/bookhistory/intellectualproperty/4.htm [4] http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=facpubs http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
yeukhon 10y ago
I for one would like to have a public digital recording of the actual trial available...
ilostmykeys 10y ago
Oracle is evil.
popmystack 10y ago
So now I can copy code and slap a new license on it, completely ignoring the original creator's rights. Awesome!
7ero 10y ago
Google copies API from Oracle, yet I still have to come up with my own solutions to get a job at Google? Fuckin' Google.
zackus 10y ago
Greedy oracle deserved
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
known 10y ago
Say no to software patents
jhanschoo 10y ago
While it is unpopular among most HN readers that APIs be found to fall under copyright, I don't see how it affects software interoperatability in the long term. It seems to me that all that this necessitates is for software publishers to include an open license for their APIs, or to release it into the public domain. In fact, it might even be beneficial, since companies can license different APIs to different customers, and have additional legal force prohibiting the use of APIs that are unofficial or unauthorized to them.
wbillingsley 10y ago
Is it just me, or is this result the worst of both worlds (for the you-and-me's of the world, rather than billion dollar corporates)? Had APIs been found not to be copyrightable, that would have been great and opened up the development ecosystem for us to use and adapt each other's APIs. Had it been clear that no this sort of thing wasn't allowed then small developers would have had protection that they could publish their APIs without fear of a deep-pocketed competitor saying "thanks, we're going to muscle you out of the market, using your own design to do it, and ignoring any of that GPL nonsense you've licensed it licensed under, we're just having your API as our own thanks". Not an open world, but at least everyone would be on a level field. But a "fair use" finding of fact sets no precedent for anything else, gives no protection for the ordinary developer, and essentially means "it turns out you can do this if you're big enough to afford to pay high-tier lawyers for six years". (ie, BigCorp can copy APIs with impunity, but you can't)
JackPoach 10y ago
Good for google
pjmlp 10y ago
If Oracle decides to drop Java development, I wonder who will bother to pick it up. Surely not Google, if they hadn't bothered the first time around.
- geodel 10y ago
  Considering IBM/SAP are vowing to bring Swift to masses on servers and clients. Apple/MS dropped Java quite a while back. I do not see any big vendor with serious money to pick Java development. Redhat is there but I doubt they will when they might be looking to push Ceylon. Of course it is hypothetical as I absolutely do not think Oracle will consider doing such thing.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    Oracle had already a big bet on Java before they bough Sun. Many of the Oracle-hate group aren't aware of the NC Computer and the JavaStation, or that already in 2000 most of the Oracle GUI tools were Java based. So on one hand they have lots of interest in Java and have been better than Sun in its last years, but they also have not been handling JEE, JavaFX and mobile support on iOS and WP that well. Also many of the nice goodies in language evolution have been postponed for Java 10 (AOT, value types, JNI replacement). Being too old at this game I have the same feelings that Java might follow Clipper or Delphi footsteps, if Oracle looses interest in the tech stack and no one picks it up, regardless how ingrained Java is nowadays. IBM is not only looking at Swift, they also have made J9 modular as a framework for implementing language runtimes.
zackus 10y ago
Google beats Oracle in $9 billion Android trial here more to read .. http://www.readnews247.com/detail/15985 http://www.readnews247.com/detail/15985
known 10y ago
Patents and Open source is Oxymoron
benmcnelly 10y ago
IANAL

1832 points by LukeB_UK 10y ago

spelunker 10y ago

Is this legit? If so, thank goodness.

Bahamut 10y ago
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-wins-trial-against-oracle-as-jury-finds-android-is-fair-use/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/google-wins-trial...

phasmantistes 10y ago

I'd also just like to give huge props to Sarah Jeong for keeping up such a high-quality live stream of tweets over the course of the entire trial. That's reporting done right.

toufka 10y ago
Yep Sarah Jeong @sarahjeong, and Parker Higgins @xor (of EFF) both did great jobs in communicating about the trial. They both provided an account along with some context. Sarah's reporting: https://storify.com/sarahjeong https://storify.com/sarahjeong Parker's story: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/stakes-are-high-oracle-v-google-public-has-already-lost-big https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/stakes-are-high-oracle...
rplnt 10y ago
> tweets > reporting done right I'm not sure. Surely it would only benefit her if she weren't limited by 140 characters, right?
- untog 10y ago
  That's one way of looking at it. But using a medium where people expect short, frequent updates rather than a 10,000 word article has its advantages.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    There's a wide spectrum between a 10k word article and not being limited.
    - k__ 10y ago
      The realtime feeds I see on other news sites aren't much longer than 140 characters. So it was okay to choose Twitter, I think.
- joshkpeterson 10y ago
  Well she also publishes stories on motherboard so what are you trying to say exactly...?
- c_c_c 10y ago
  No. You're allowed more than 140 characters because you can tweet more than once. The real time updates were invaluable.
  - toyg 10y ago
    How so? This isn't something where you'll have to decide in a split-second wether to take to the streets in response to this or that development. You could argue that there is some value for stock traders (and tbh, given the result, even for them it's basically the same as it was before), but that's about it. It's just the "breaking news" frenzy applied to social media. Nothing to celebrate, imho.
    - c_c_c 10y ago
      Sorry but this was an example of how a real time feed on twitter can be informative in a way that a long form piece could not. A summary of the trial would not be the same as the minutiae that she was able to convey. It was done really well. If all you get is long form from New Yorker or Le Monde, you're missing out.
  - rplnt 10y ago
    Not having a limit does not mean you can't post real time updates. But having the limit means you sometimes can't post even a single coherent sentence.

Analemma_ 10y ago

Now we have to hope this doesn't get overturned by a Circuit judge like it did before. Still, this is excellent news.

davidw 10y ago
I'll admit to not really understanding the path this has taken through the courts - I haven't been following that closely though.
- phasmantistes 10y ago
  A short summary: * Oracle sues Google on copyright grounds. * Case is overseen by Judge Alsup, who taught himself Java in order to understand the technical merits of the case. Case is split into two phases: copyright and patents. * A jury finds Google to be infringing on copyright, but deadlocks on the fair-use defense. The jury finds Google to be non-infringing on all patents. * Judge Alsup breaks the jury's deadlock on copyright by ruling that APIs are not copyrightable in the first place. * Oracle appeals the patent claim, Google simultaneously appeals the copyright claim (it wasn't 100% in their favor). * The Federal Court of Appeals (9th Circuit) hears the case due to the patent portion. It overturns Alsup's decision, declaring that APIs are in fact copyrightable. It remands the case back down to Judge Alsup. * Google petitions the Supreme Court to hear the case instead, but the Court declines the request. * Judge Alsup oversees a second trial, this time solely on the fair-use merits. * The jury finds that Google's use of the APIs indeed falls under fair use.
  - wtallis 10y ago
    The Federal Circuit isn't the Ninth Circuit, and that's really the whole problem. The Federal Circuit is the special-purpose patent appeals court. For a case like this where they were hearing the appeal because there were patent claims, they are supposed to treat the non-patent issues in the manner of the local circuit (9th). The Federal Circuit has a history of ruling in favor of broader intellectual property rights and being periodically reined in by the Supreme Court. They do it for patents, and when Oracle uses a losing patent claim to get copyright issues before the Federal Circuit, they rule for expanding copyright. If Oracle hadn't included patent claims, the appeal would have gone before the Ninth Circuit and probably lost. The Federal Circuit did a farcical job of applying Ninth Circuit copyright precedent, especially in contrast to the thorough job Alsup did.

jcdavis 10y ago

What is the room for appeals here? This is a massive ruling, heres to hoping it stands

revelation 10y ago
This is already the retrial, I'm pretty sure it's dead now.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Nope. Oracle can appeal to the Federal Circuit.
  - revelation 10y ago
    Of course they can. But appeals typically have little chance of success, and a case that has already gone all up the appeal chain once and had a complete retrial? No way.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      It hasn't had a complete retrial. In the first trial, the judge (Alsup) ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted. Google also had a fair-use defense, but didn't waste time on the trial with that, because Alsup had already ruled that APIs could not be copyrighted. Oracle lost that trial. Oracle appealed, and at the appeals court won a ruling that APIs could be copyrighted. The case got sent back down for a trial that was only about the fair-use defense, not a complete retrial.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Oracle can appeal all they want to the CAFC. Overturning a unanimous jury verdict is a herculean task.
- ars 10y ago
  Am I correct that they can only appeal an incorrect application of the law, but not the facts of the case? (Including the facts the Jury has decided.)

EddieRingle 10y ago

Hopefully soon we can stop focusing on legalities and get back to building cool stuff.

seangrant 10y ago
When's the last time Oracle has built "cool stuff"?
- bydo 10y ago
  America's Cup?
- glibgil 10y ago
  April 28th, 2016 according to vagrant on my Mac https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog At least I think it is pretty cool (and very gracious of Oracle)
  - wtallis 10y ago
    You're not exactly setting the bar very high for Oracle. VirtualBox was mostly GPL'd before its developer was bought by Sun, which was later bought by Oracle. Saying that it's "very gracious" of Oracle to not kill a successful project or fire all its developers makes it sound like you've been brainwashed under an oppressive tyranny.
    - glibgil 10y ago
      You're a special kind of ingrate. Oracle spends a great deal of its treasure on open source software. They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves. You have no leg to stand on. Oracle is doing a nice thing for the engineering community. They don't have to, but they do. It is nice of them. You are being rude
      - wtallis 10y ago
        > "They maintain and innovate on those projects at great cost to themselves." Net cost? Most certainly not. That's not how Oracle works at all. Saying that they aren't entirely opposed to participating in mutually beneficial arrangements is still setting the bar pretty damn low and is not a distinction worthy of any praise.

brotherjerky 10y ago

This is fantastic news!

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

Great news to a degree. It still means APIs can be copy-written which is a bit unfortunate in my opinion. But they won on fair use which is still a victory. Anyways I wonder how long this is going to keep going on for as I'm assuming Oracle will appeal.

Cyph0n 10y ago

Great news! This is a win for us software devs :) I'd like to note that Ars Technica's coverage of the trial has been excellent throughout.

Zenith77 10y ago
No it's not. It effectively means I can copy code without respect to the original author's rights, slap a new license on it, and call it a day. As long as it's under the guise of some higher ideal of software development -- which we know from historical accounts this was definitely not the case.
- zardeh 10y ago
  What? This case had literally nothing to do with copying code.
  - Zenith77 10y ago
    You do realize how this case got to the court it's in, right? So yes, it most definitely isn't about copying code.
    - zardeh 10y ago
      >So yes, it most definitely isn't about copying code. Exactly?

VeejayRampay 10y ago

Nelson Muntz would rejoice at this verdict. Oracle's claim was laughable.

rayiner 10y ago

These are the statutory fair use factors the jury was required to consider (17 U.S.C. 107): (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. It's a somewhat surprising result, because two of the factors weigh heavily against Google (it's a commercial work, and was important to Android gaining developer market-share). Oracle's strategy going forward, both in post-trial motions and in any subsequent appeal, will be based on arguing that no rational jury could have applied these factors to the undisputed facts of the case and concluded that the fair use test was met. It's also not a particularly satisfying result for anybody. If API's are copyrightable, then I can't think of a better case for protecting them than in this one, where Google created a commercial product for profit and there was no research or scientific motivation. It wasn't even really a case (like say, Samba) where copying was necessary to interoperate with a closed, proprietary system. Davlik isn't drop-in compatible with the JVM anyway. That makes Oracle's win on the subject matter issue basically a pyrrhic victory for anyone looking to protect their APIs. They're protectable, but can't be protected in any realistic scenario. And if you're in the camp that believes APIs should not be protected, this precedent--if it stands--means that you'll have to shoulder the expense of going to trial on the fair use issue before winning on the merits.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
Would that be like Oracle arguing jury nullification? It seems that the case law on nullification is that the jury's verdict is the definition unless vacated by procedural error. Thoughts?
- rayiner 10y ago
  It's the opposite, in that instead of the jury overruling the judge on law (normally the province of the judge), the judge overrules the jury on the ultimate factual question of liability (normally the province of the jury). The required showing is accordingly exacting (though hardly impossible to meet in practice): no rational jury could have reached the same conclusion.

koolba 10y ago

Wow. I suddenly have a lot more faith in the courts and juries to land sane verdicts in technology trials. Still sad that it takes a billion dollar company to be able to stand up to this (as anybody smaller would be crushed by the trial expense) but let's celebrate it none the less. Any lawyers around? I wonder if Google can claim legal expenses back from Oracle.

dctoedt 10y ago
Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/505 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/505
- koolba 10y ago
  > Under the Copyright Act, the judge has discretion to award attorney fees to the prevailing party. [0] I think that'd be good for the ecosystem as it'd send a message that there will be consequence for pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
  - throwawaykeno 10y ago
    I don't think it's fair to call this law suit frivolous. From a developer perspective, the ideal and just end result has always seemed rather obvious. However, the multi-year history of this case demonstrates the correct legal answer not so obvious, at least from a legal perspective. For example, settling the issue on fair use was definitely not how most people thought/hoped this would shake out way back in the beginning of the law suit(s).
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      If I learned one thing from the SCO mess, it's that a high-powered law firm can take absolutely no case and make it last at least a decade.
    - sounds 10y ago

ShaneBonich 10y ago

That was expected. Happy for Google.

nabaraz 10y ago

My favourite part of the trial was when the judge told Oracle that a high schooler could write rangeCheck[1]. [1] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/1612228/judge-to-oracle-a-high-schooler-could-write-rangecheck https://developers.slashdot.org/story/12/05/16/1612228/judge...

phasmantistes 10y ago
That was from the first time around in this trial, before it was overturned at the Federal Circuit level and sent back to Judge Alsup for a retrial.
untog 10y ago
My favourite part: Movement to a few minutes of terse explanations, including what the acronym GNU stands for: GNU is Not Unix. “The G part stands for GNU?” Alsup asked in disbelief. “Yes,” said Schwartz on the stand. “That doesn’t make any sense,” http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerds-are-getting-owned http://motherboard.vice.com/read/in-google-v-oracle-the-nerd...
- legohead 10y ago
  Lesson 1: recursion Lesson 2: See Lesson 1
- typon 10y ago
  Wait till they hear about mutually recursive acronyms like GNU HURD.
- slavik81 10y ago
  I never realized how entertaining this trial was. Schwartz: "Back in 2009, Android WAS lame." Google atty: "Move to strike, your honor!" https://twitter.com/xor/status/730456825649188865 https://twitter.com/xor/status/730456825649188865
  - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
    Yer, it was absolutely hilarious. They had to get a tech guy in to open Java files on a computer. They didn't have an IDE installed on there and there were complaints that there were too many folders!

suyash 10y ago

Today is a sad day for Silicon Valley. Our legal process has demonstrated how incompetent it is when it comes to Technology IP protection.

stcredzero 10y ago
Today is a wonderful day for Silicon Valley. Our legal process has demonstrated that it can learn and improve when it comes to Technology.
solotronics 10y ago
How so? My understanding was that Oracle was suing Google over the use of an API. This seems quite unreasonable to me but that could be due to my tech background and lack of legal knowledge.
- mSparks 10y ago
  While I don't really agree with the OP, I totally understand the sentiment. It's really an acute issue between legal copyright and the new reality of modern computing. It used to be that copyright sustained our industries. Pottery, Pattern designs on fabric, and later music and films. In the modern world however, it seems positively damaging, with the likes of China, with no respect for IP and copyright rocketing ahead, most of the innovation happening in the west is in ways to bypass it, GNU is Not UNIX, Lame ain't an MP3 Encoder... and the old guard that depended on the old way falling ever further behind. In the days of getting material simply by asking a computer to fetch what you want (and nothing more than a few watts of electricity being consumed to do so) copyright simply doesn't make sense in any respect. But I suspect that opinion is just as unwelcome as the OPs.
  - stsp 10y ago
    Additional reading material: http://questioncopyright.org/learn http://questioncopyright.org/learn
floatalong 10y ago
Are you referring to Oracle's behavior? I would agree that while it's a glorious day, nonetheless the verdict is a chilling reminder of the abuse of IP.

pavpanchekha 10y ago

This is possibly my best-case scenario. APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court), and this seems reasonable, since some APIs really are very good and treating them like an artistic work has benefits. But implementing them is fair use, preserving the utility of APIs for compatibility. Great news!

halo 10y ago
If other countries follow USSC's lead in declaring APIs as copyrightable, many of which have far looser fair use rights than the US, then this could create a lot of headaches, especially since this seems like a very loose interpretation of the US's already loose fair-use laws.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  The USSC hasn't ruled on copyrightability (they still might in this case, and it's anyone's guess how they would.)
  - oceanswave 10y ago
    The proper acronym is SCOTUS.
pfg 10y ago
> APIs are copywriteable (so says the Supreme Court) My understanding is that they refused to hear the case at the time. Is that, legally speaking, the same thing as agreeing with the circuit court, or could they have just refused to hear the case for some other reason (e.g. because they wanted to see the ruling on fair use first)?
- rincebrain 10y ago
  It is not the same as agreeing with the lower court - AIUI if they heard it and ruled, the scope of the decision for purposes of precedent would be* "every court" (though not necessarily every case), while declining to hear it does not change the scope or outcome of the prior ruling. * - as with everything in the legal system, there are exceptions and fuzzy lines, and IANAL.

mythz 10y ago

Whew, Oracle's lawyers and blind greed doesn't get to destroy interoperability for the entire Tech Industry. But the fact that Oracle could get this close and spin deceit to a non-technical Jury to decide whether using API declarations from an OSS code-base would in some universe entitle them to a $9B payday, is frightening.

epalmer 10y ago
> But the fact that Oracle could get this close and spin deceit to a non-technical Jury to decide whether using API declarations from an OSS code-base would in some universe entitle them to a $9B payday, is frightening. Yes this was really a close one. I am breathing a sigh of relief now.
farcical_tinpot 10y ago
They can appeal, but it is going to be very hard for them to get any revenue out of this court action now. That's what this would have been - revenue.

shmerl 10y ago

Congratulations! It's a pity that previous decision declared APIs copyrightable. This never should have happened. But at least fair use worked out. I wonder though how universal that ruling would be. Is any reimplementation of APIs going to be fair use, and if not, what are the criteria?

gaius 10y ago

Great, the ad company beat the company that makes actual products. Welcome to the new Silly Valley.

cm3 10y ago

So, APIs are still thought as copyright'able and that was a different trial, right? Now Google was ruled okay to use that single, small function, or what was this about? A little more info would be nice for those who aren't following this closely.

anarres 10y ago
In 2012, court rules Java APIs are not copyrightable. In 2014, that decision was appealed and overruled, declaring Java APIs copyrightable. The case was sent back to determine if Google's reimplementing APIs was "fair use" of copyrighted material. Now we saw that trial, where jury ruled on fair use. It was fair use. (nothing to do with any small function, that was in 2012)

zerocrates 10y ago

See, as ever, Florian Mueller for a... different perspective: http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/oracle-v-google-jury-finds-in-favor-of.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2016/05/oracle-v-google-jury-find...

Oletros 10y ago
His level of insanity and hatred is beyond belief
- kstrauser 10y ago
  No. He's a paid consultant to Oracle and Microsoft (see: http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-to-google-which-bloggers-did-you-pay-off-2012-8?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-to-google-which-blogge...) and his employers get their money's worth.
  - vesinisa 10y ago
    He still seems like a sociopath. Taking money to poison communities does not glorify it.
    - kstrauser 10y ago
      I didn't say he's not scummy, just that he's not insane. It's my belief that he's get paid well to say scummy things, which is rational if not tasteful.
- jshevek 10y ago
  Your statement seemed hyperbolic until I followed the link and skimmed a handful of posts. He does indeed come across as someone consumed by hatred to the level of insanity. Why wouldn't anyone link to him? Its like linking to the Westboro baptist people in a discussion about Christian theology.
  - yohui 10y ago

blacktulip 10y ago

Excuse me here but I have to ask. Is this final? Because I've read that Oracle won the case some time ago.

pfg 10y ago
The district court originally ruled that APIs weren't copyrightable. The appeals court overturned that decision, ruling that APIs were copyrightable, but that it could be fair use. The case went back to the district court for that point, and the jury now decided that it was in fact fair use.
- simcop2387 10y ago
  Yep, and that fair use argument is why the SCOTUS declined to hear it at the time. Be interesting to see if it goes back that way or if Oracle decides it's not going to get anything from doing so.
dave2000 10y ago
This is the appeal against the appeal. You can guess what will happen next.

crispyambulance 10y ago

Perhaps the jury was not as clueless as some here were assuming?

grizzles 10y ago

Apis are still copyrightable according to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. That's not great, and I hope Congress does something about it for the other languages (eg. C#/.NET) that haven't yet been whitelisted as fair to use by the judicial system.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 10y ago

I remember that afternoon deserts served in Google restaurants when I worked there were very tasty - I hope everyone is celebrating with a good snack :-) Seriously, I think this is a good verdict. I think that Oracle has been doing a good job sheparding Java, but this law suit really seemed to me to be too much of a money grab.

davis 10y ago

If you found Sarah's coverage of the trial useful, she is accepting payments on PayPal since she was doing it with her own money: https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/731687243916529665 https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/731687243916529665

xyzzy4 10y ago
It costs her money to post on Twitter?
- cheald 10y ago
  It costs her time, at a minimum, which comes at the opportunity cost of other money-making ventures.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - xenihn 10y ago
    She's strengthening her personal brand and potentially gaining access to new clients for future work. I have absolutely no problem with her asking for donations, but let's not be disingenuous :)
    - cheald 10y ago
      Agreed, but brand doesn't put food on the table!
    - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
      Ahhhh, yes, the 'giving exposure' argument.
      - xenihn 10y ago
        Did you somehow misconstrue my post as an argument that she should not be paid?

grellas 10y ago

Law evolves and the law of copyright in particular is ripe for "disruption" - and I say this not as one who opposes the idea of copyright but, on the contrary, as one who strongly supports it. It is right that the author of a creative work get protection for having conceived that work and reduced it to tangible form. Developers do this all the time with their code. So too do many, many others. Many today disagree with this because they grew up in a digital age where copyright was seen as simply an unnecessary impediment to the otherwise limitless and basically cost-free capacity we all have to reproduce digital products in our modern world and hence an impediment to the social good that would come from widespread sharing of such products for free. Yet, as much as people believe that information ought to be free, it is a fact that simply letting any casual passer-by copy and distribute any creative work with impunity would certainly work to rob those who may have spent countless hours developing such works of the commercial value of their efforts. I will grant that this is a social policy judgment on which the law could come down on either side. I stand with the idea of copyright protection. Even granting the correctness of copyright as a body of law that protects certain property interests, there are still many abuses in the way it is implemented and enforced. Copyright terms have been extended to the point of absurdity, and certainly well beyond what is needed to give the original author an opportunity to gain the fruits of his or her labor. Enforcement statutes are heavy-handed and potentially abusive, especially as they apply to relatively minor acts of infringement by end-users. And the list goes on. The point is that many people are fed up with copyright law as currently implemented and, when there is widespread discontent in society over the effects of a law, the time is ripe for a change. I believe this is where copyright law is today. The Bono law may have slipped through Congress with nary a dissent in its day but this will not happen again, whatever the lobbying power of Disney and others. And the same is true for the scope of copyright law as it applies to APIs. Ours is a world of digital interoperability. People see and like its benefits. Society benefits hugely from it. Those who are creatively working to change the world - developers - loath having artificial barriers that block those benefits and that may subject them to potential legal liabilities to boot. Therefore, the idea that an API is copyrightable is loathsome to them. And it is becoming increasingly so to the society as a whole. The copyright law around APIs had developed in fits and starts throughout the 1980s and 1990s, primarily in the Ninth Circuit where Silicon Valley is located. When Oracle sued Google in this case, that law was basically a mess. Yet Judge Alsup, the judge assigned to this case, did a brilliant synthesis in coming up with a coherent and logically defensible legal justification for why APIs in the abstract should not be protected by copyright. He did this by going back to the purpose of copyright, by examining in detail what it is that APIs do, and by applying the law in light of its original purpose. The result was simple and compelling (though the judicial skill it took to get there was pretty amazing). Legal decisions are binding or not depending on the authority of the court making them and on whether a particular dispute in under the authority of one court or another when it is heard. The decision by Judge Alsup is that of a trial judge and hence not legally binding as precedent on any other judge. It could be hugely persuasive or influential but no court is bound to follow it in a subsequent case. The Federal Circuit decision that reversed Judge Alsup and held APIs to be copyrightable is not that of a trial judge and has much more precedential effect. Yet it too has limited authority. The Federal Circuit Court does not even have copyright as its area of jurisdiction. It is a specialty court set up to hear patent appeals. The only reason it heard this case was because the original set of claims brought by Oracle included patent claims and this became a technical ground by which the Federal Circuit Court gained jurisdiction to hear the appeal. But there are many other Federal Circuit courts in the U.S. and the effect of the Federal Circuit Court decision concerning copyrights is not binding on them. There is also the U.S. Supreme Court. It has the final authority and its decisions are binding on all lower federal courts as concerns copyright law. The point is that the battle over this issue is not over. It is true that the Federal Circuit decision was a large setback for those who believe APIs should not be subject to copyright. Yet there remains that whole issue of social resistance and that is huge. It will undoubtedly take some time but the law can and does change in ways that tend to reflect what people actually think and want, at least in important areas. No one has a stake in seeing that Oracle be awarded $9 billion in damages just because it bought Sun Microsystems and found an opportunity through its lawyers to make a big money grab against Google. But a lot of people have a stake in keeping software interoperability open and free and many, many people in society benefit from this. Nor is this simply an issue of unsophisticated people fighting the shark lawyers and the big corporations. Many prominent organizations such as EFF are in the mix and are strongly advocating for the needed changes. Thus, this fight over APIs will continue and I believe the law will eventually change for the better. In this immediate case, I believe the jury likely applied common sense in concluding unanimously that, notwithstanding Oracle's technical arguments, the use here was in fact benign given the ultimate purposes of copyright law. I leave the technical analysis to others but, to me, this seems to be a microcosm of the pattern I describe above: when something repels, and you have a legitimate chance to reject it, you do. Here, the idea of fair use gave the jury a big, fat opening and the jury took it.

tostitos1979 10y ago

Despite the win, I think it would have been far better for the computer industry if Google had bought Sun. Unlike other companies with crap (IMHO ... Nokia, Motorola), Sun actually had stuff of value. This is a lesson that geeks get but I'm not sure MBAs do or will ever get.

lallysingh 10y ago
Agreed. Google may have made a better steward of Java than Oracle. But I don't know what tech Google would've directly benefitted from. They could've ported dtrace and zfs (and changed licenses) to Linux. But they'd have to keep all those support contracts going, which is a pain. That's more Oracle-side.
a3n 10y ago
Yeah. Thank you Sun, for ... everything, including employing the people you employed.
- dguaraglia 10y ago
  Interesting that you mention that. When I was back in university (early 2000s) there were a few "big companies" to work for. If you cared about having the perks, the money and a cool office, you wanted to work for Microsoft. If you were more of a reclusive neckbeard with a love for the more arcane aspects of computing and networking (like I was), you wanted to work for Sun. It was seen as the place where you'd be free to work on cool research projects rather than (god forbid!) consumer software. That's where the luminaries were. Of course, even back then nobody wanted to work for IBM or HP. Heh.
  - tostitos1979 10y ago
    At IBM, the Watson, Almaden and other research labs used to be the place to be.
farcical_tinpot 10y ago
I often wondered why Google didn't. Simply owning Java alone and heading off this inevitable nonsense would have been enough reason. This kind of legal stuff is really the only way Sun were going to make money from Java. Heaven knows, Java has continued in spite of Sun, not because of them. The trouble is, they would have had to keep a lot of legacy crap going like Solaris and SPARC which probably wouldn't have appealed to them. Sun was, and still is, haemorrhaging cash.

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Oracle will likely appeal, but they'll lose again. Overturning a unanimous jury verdict is very difficult.

satysin 10y ago

So is this really over for good now? Can Oracle appeal and drag this on for another decade?

musesum 10y ago

> "For me, declaring code is not code," Page said. Unless, of course, the declaring code is declaring declaring code, as in Prolog and its ilk.

jrochkind1 10y ago

thank god.

steffenfrost 10y ago

Would swizzling methods violate copyright?

chatmasta 10y ago

What impact does this have on reverse engineering private APIs and reimplementing them? And selling those reimplementations? Can I reverse engineer the private API of a mobile app, then implement my own client to talk to its servers? What if I create my own "bridge" API to talk to the private API? Can I then sell access to the bridge API, allowing developers to use the private API of the app through my service? And how does this relate to, e.g. running private world of warcraft servers with modded code that allows purchasing in-game items? (See http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-private-server-lawsuit/ http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-private-server-lawsuit/)

coldpie 10y ago
These kinds of questions are why this court case is so incredibly disastrous. Oracle has really done humanity an enormous disservice here, and any clients of theirs should immediately sever contracts in return for their blatant attempt to destroy software development. I'm not fucking exaggerating. If you thought software patents were bad, Oracle just unleashed a whole new level of hell.
- chatmasta 10y ago
  I'm not sure if you misread my questions or I misread your answer. I'm asking about new opportunities this precedent allows, not existing ones it forbids. For example, the private WoW server case was ruled in favor of Blizzard. With this new precedent, would a court come to the same conclusion?
  - farcical_tinpot 10y ago
    The OP certainly did answer your questions and since you asked the questions you did you probably already know the answers ;-).
    - chatmasta 10y ago
      Haha, cheers. I'm not quite ready to commit to a ;-) just yet however.

jhh 10y ago

What I don't understand about this: Why didn't Google/Android use Java under the Open Source license under which it has been provided. Wouldn't that have saved all the trouble?

icebraining 10y ago
Probably because that would force them and anyone extending Android to license their extensions under the GPL. Phone OEMs would probably keep away from that can of worms.
anarres 10y ago
When Google started Android (2005ish, iirc), OpenJDK didn't exist yet.
- jhh 10y ago
  Well that's a simple and convincing answer. Thanks.
farcical_tinpot 10y ago
OpenJDK either didn't exist or was in its infancy. Also, Oracle created a lot of confusion in that they tried to argue that even Apache Harmony was in violation. Also, there were a lot of third party drivers and software they couldn't use the GPL with. That has now largely disappeared.

ChrisLomont 10y ago

This is 100% inaccurate That story leaves out significant details, and his description of the reason is wrong. He leaves out significant prior sources and reasons, to the point your statement "It was not created to help artists or whoever" is simply wrong. Wikipedia provides a far better history with extensive sources [1]. Note for example the section "Early Developments" where they list precursors to anything in your source as having significant components of individual and author rights. Note also in the US copyright law was started by author guilds wanting author protection, and the first federal copyright act in 1790 was about protection for authors, not for printers. This was an extension of many states laws that had passed author protections. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law

belorn 10y ago
Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is actively discourage by Wikipedia project itself and by basically every university and research body in existence. The Early Developments section you talk about is about the concept of copyright as it exist today, rather than the history of copyright law as it was made. The French law, while tangential, followed a different path and focus heavily on the concept of moral right, concept which does not explicitly exist in the US copyright law. US law focused instead on statutory monopolies, and loosely match that of the French commercial right that authors was granted. Authors moral rights, as the existed in French copyright law, was instead weakly incorporated into libel laws. You claim that the US copyright law was started by authors guild, but three states had already enacted copyright statutes prior to the Continental Congress resolution. Where is your evidence that author protection was the intention behind the law makers of the time, which goes in rather stark contrast to every other aspect and the final text which focuses on the commercial aspects and not the rights of the authors. If the US copyright law was derrived from the French law, why is there no concept of "authors moral right" as there is in many EU countries to this day?
- ChrisLomont 10y ago
  >Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source... Which is why you can check the references. When the article linked above about copyright is clearly coming from an anti-copyright source, and does not mention multiple important things Wikipedia does, I think any intelligent person realizes the Wikipedia source is more credible. As to overall accuracy of Wikipedia, many, many studies show it is quite accurate. Google and read the evidence. >You claim that the US copyright law was started by authors guild It's not my claim - Wikipedia sourced it. Since you don't like it, here [3] are some details with names and dates you can check, and here [4] is a paper titled "The Anti-Monopoly Origins of the Patent and Copyright Clause" with significant details. >three states had already enacted copyright statutes prior to the Continental Congress resolution "The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War." [1] And.... "Twelve states passed copyright laws prior to the work of the Continental Congress. Delaware chose not to pass a copyright law." [2] Here [2] is the text of the 1790 Copyright Act. It is completely about protecting author rights - every single section details this. The word author occurs 21 times in a page and a half. For example, (cutting out wordy clauses - go read the original if you doubt this) Section 1 - "the author...shall have the sole right ... of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending..." Section 2 - "any person .. without the consent of the author...shall forfeit all and every sheet and item.. and pay the sum of fifty cents for every sheet..." Section 6 - "any person .. who shall print ... without consent ... of the author.. shall be liable to suffer and pay ... all damages.." >the final text which focuses on the commercial aspects and not the rights of the authors I have no idea how you arrived at this statement. I just cited the law which clearly, in every section, enumerates authors rights. Care to cite this "final text" which does not? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 [2] http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf http://www.copyright.gov/history/1790act.pdf [3] http://eduscapes.com/bookhistory/intellectualproperty/4.htm http://eduscapes.com/bookhistory/intellectualproperty/4.htm [4] http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1111&context=facpubs http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

yeukhon 10y ago

I for one would like to have a public digital recording of the actual trial available...

ilostmykeys 10y ago

Oracle is evil.

popmystack 10y ago

So now I can copy code and slap a new license on it, completely ignoring the original creator's rights. Awesome!

7ero 10y ago

Google copies API from Oracle, yet I still have to come up with my own solutions to get a job at Google? Fuckin' Google.

zackus 10y ago

Greedy oracle deserved

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

known 10y ago

Say no to software patents

jhanschoo 10y ago

While it is unpopular among most HN readers that APIs be found to fall under copyright, I don't see how it affects software interoperatability in the long term. It seems to me that all that this necessitates is for software publishers to include an open license for their APIs, or to release it into the public domain. In fact, it might even be beneficial, since companies can license different APIs to different customers, and have additional legal force prohibiting the use of APIs that are unofficial or unauthorized to them.

wbillingsley 10y ago

Is it just me, or is this result the worst of both worlds (for the you-and-me's of the world, rather than billion dollar corporates)? Had APIs been found not to be copyrightable, that would have been great and opened up the development ecosystem for us to use and adapt each other's APIs. Had it been clear that no this sort of thing wasn't allowed then small developers would have had protection that they could publish their APIs without fear of a deep-pocketed competitor saying "thanks, we're going to muscle you out of the market, using your own design to do it, and ignoring any of that GPL nonsense you've licensed it licensed under, we're just having your API as our own thanks". Not an open world, but at least everyone would be on a level field. But a "fair use" finding of fact sets no precedent for anything else, gives no protection for the ordinary developer, and essentially means "it turns out you can do this if you're big enough to afford to pay high-tier lawyers for six years". (ie, BigCorp can copy APIs with impunity, but you can't)

JackPoach 10y ago

Good for google

pjmlp 10y ago

If Oracle decides to drop Java development, I wonder who will bother to pick it up. Surely not Google, if they hadn't bothered the first time around.

geodel 10y ago
Considering IBM/SAP are vowing to bring Swift to masses on servers and clients. Apple/MS dropped Java quite a while back. I do not see any big vendor with serious money to pick Java development. Redhat is there but I doubt they will when they might be looking to push Ceylon. Of course it is hypothetical as I absolutely do not think Oracle will consider doing such thing.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  Oracle had already a big bet on Java before they bough Sun. Many of the Oracle-hate group aren't aware of the NC Computer and the JavaStation, or that already in 2000 most of the Oracle GUI tools were Java based. So on one hand they have lots of interest in Java and have been better than Sun in its last years, but they also have not been handling JEE, JavaFX and mobile support on iOS and WP that well. Also many of the nice goodies in language evolution have been postponed for Java 10 (AOT, value types, JNI replacement). Being too old at this game I have the same feelings that Java might follow Clipper or Delphi footsteps, if Oracle looses interest in the tech stack and no one picks it up, regardless how ingrained Java is nowadays. IBM is not only looking at Swift, they also have made J9 modular as a framework for implementing language runtimes.

zackus 10y ago

Google beats Oracle in $9 billion Android trial here more to read .. http://www.readnews247.com/detail/15985 http://www.readnews247.com/detail/15985

known 10y ago

Patents and Open source is Oxymoron

benmcnelly 10y ago

IANAL