Copying an API is just reciting a bunch of facts. Individual details which aren't protected, stripped from the protected context of the work as a whole. If you

Copying an API is just reciting a bunch of facts. Individual details which aren't protected, stripped from the protected context of the work as a whole. If you're saying that the API reference itself can be copyrighted, yes, I agree. My typesetting of it, my method ordering, etc. All protectable. But not the facts on which it's based. > If you wrote out a prose description of [...] Of course that would be fine, but you don't have to go that far. And I could take your prose description and strip the prose from it and turn it back into an API description. In that scenario, whose copyright do you think is being violated? The original work which I've never seen, or yours?