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Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google

778 points by uptown 9y ago

DarkCrusader2 9y ago
> The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet Inc. unit should pay. No Google is not going to pay billion dollars, not yet. Very clickbaity title.
- protonimitate 9y ago
  Title is perfectly accurate imo. The case originally had Oracle seeking 8.8b in damages. Oracle won the revival. Therefore Oracle won the revival of a billion dollar case. The title does not state or imply that google will pay the full amount, only that the case is not dead. I know, click bait is bad, but it really irks me that people on HN are so quick to pull the 'click-bait' card for no reason. Would a different title really change anyone's interpretation of the article? I don't think so.
- haZard_OS 9y ago
  How is the title click-bait? It doesn't say that Google will pay billions. It says it is a billion-dollar case...and it is (at least potentially). If this meets your definition of "very clickbaity" then where could you go to avoid click-bait?!
- coding123 9y ago
  Well it's 25% clickbaity IMO - it was the billion dollar case, but perhaps "Java Copyright Case" would have been better.
bitcharmer 9y ago
It's a shame that there was no one like judge Alsup in the appeals court. Now it's about legal phrases and licensing terms instead of common sense all over again.
- BoorishBears 9y ago
  Unpopular opinion: I feel Google should be punished for what they did to Java. Maybe the mechanism being used is wrong, but Android bastardized Java and as an Android developer I feel real damage has been done to the health of the Java ecosystem by having billions of devices run fragmented Java-but-not-Java. Google has started to make it right with the switch to openJDK and Desugar, but in a lot of ways it’s too little very late.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    So you want Swing apps on Android?
    - anonymouse12 9y ago
      Quit shilling for your employer. No one takes this argument about a piece of technology (swing) that has not been relevant for over a decade and a half seriously. Look up the history of innovations that Java and in particular the hotspot JVM brought to the mainstream. Enough with this false narrative that java and the jvm sucked and was in decline and Google swooped in and saved it. Some of the creators of your beloved V8 and Go Lang were the very same folks who helped create the hotspot JVM. Google basically pulled a fast one by not buying a license and they knew the consequences even at the time this occurred.
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      Someone flagged the comment before I could post my response, but here it was (re: Google didn't save Java on the client): Java on the server was not in decline, but Java on the desktop was declining, had declined. Applets were dead, very few success stories around Java Web Start. And the main three 'consumer' success stories for Java on the frontend were Limewire, Minecraft, and IntelliJ/Eclipse. As a consumer facing technology, Java was a complete failure. No sane person wanting to ship a commercial, consumer app to end users would consider Java as a first choice. I have been a Java developer from the day HotSpot Alpha was released, I say this as someone who loves the platform. Personal Java failed. I worked for years on J2ME apps, Java on high end Nokia Phones, Java on Palm devices (Ghost VM), etc. All these platforms amounted to nada. Flash was far more widely used for front end user facing apps than Java. Ditto for Visual Basic. The relevance of the Swing comment is the people complaining about the fragmentation of Java's write-once-run-anywhere promise, which was always more of a promise than a reality. If you want to make a viable mobile Java, you had to remove Swing, Java2D, CORBA, JMX, and a ton of other JDK libraries, which is exactly what Sun did with the various profiles as well. But once you do that, you have "fragmentation" If Google had not produced Android, I can bet the leading platform today for mobile development that is not from Apple, would either be Xamarin based C#, or some scripting language like Lua or Python on top of a Linux widget toolkit. Java would not be in the mix at all. Or perhaps it would FlashMX sitting on top of Linux (ugh)
readhn 9y ago
Does oracle have a case or not? If you were Oracle, would you be ok not taking this to court?
- dbbk 9y ago
  They clearly have a case because they just won it.
  - Ajedi32 9y ago
    Yeah, seems a little strange to ask a question like that after the court already ruled in their favor. Whether you like it or not, clearly they did have a case.
- Yetanfou 9y ago
  In this field "having a case" depends not so much on objective truth but on subjective narrative, having enough money to pay more lawyers for a longer time than the opponent, finding the right judge, making sure the jury is stuffed according to plan and more of such skullduggery. If it were about objective facts the case would have been over and done with in a month with a definite conclusion, either it being OK to use API's without licensing or it being a violation to do so. If the outcome were the latter there would have been some bickering over how much to pay for said violation, add another month for that. Alas, this is not about objective truth and "having a case". It is the result of a free but regulated market being infected by a parasitic organism which has turned the regulator's defence mechanisms to its own purpose, the which being the extraction of as much value as feasible while keeping the host alive.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    The question here is not so much one of fact, but one of law. And stuffing the jury isn't an issue with the appeals court.
todd3834 9y ago
I’m not sure if I have the timeline correct but I thought Java was owned by Sun Microsystems at the time when they made these decisions. I’m sure they rightly assumed Sun Microsystems would never do this. It is sad to see what Oracle is doing with Sun Microsystem’s creation.
- ProAm 9y ago
  This is what Oracle does with every acquisition. You wring as much revenue out of a product as possible and when you cant get anymore you toss it aside and go acquire another product/company. This is what will happen to Netsuite which was recently acquired.
- malux85 9y ago
  It is sad. When I was young, about 16-19, I had a friend who worked for Sun Microsystems and he was an amazing mentor, and maybe twice a year I got to meet some of his colleagues too. They embodied 'the hacker' spirit that I believe hacker news represents - long grey hair, very open minded, very friendly, and loved being passionate about tech discussions while keeping an open mind and a willingness to be wrong. These people turned me into who I am today by showing me a form of non-vain, open, intellectual curiosity that I try and emulate - the persons age, race, gender, religion -- all irrelevant -- it was about the ideas. Though they would look down on you if you used the wrong editor (go vi!) but they would smile and show you the way.
  - pgwhalen 9y ago
    I don’t mean to be overly negative, but I hope you recognize the irony in describing your image of a hacker as someone with long, grey hair, and proceeding to say that superficial traits like appearance don’t matter, only ideas.
    - malux85 9y ago
      I did notice that after submitting it, and made a mental note in correcting it in the future. It was more for comic effect / appeal to stereotype - but that failure is mine. I'm always learning :)
amrrs 9y ago
I'm worried if this is again going to pose serious problems in using open source stack and building profitable solutions. So, If I'm going to build something profitable using R and Tensorflow/Keras then someday I could be sued by the consortium or Microsoft that owns Revolution Analytics (that controls R) ?
- fwgwgwgch 9y ago
  Just checked Wikipedia and Microsoft indeed owns RA which "own" R. Interesting. On the other it's not about open source. If you're willing to license stuff in good faith you should be fine.
- _delirium 9y ago
  R is GPL, so as long as you're complying with the GPL terms in your use of it or derivative works, you're fine. If you make your own API-compatible reimplementation of R that isn't covered under the GPL's permission grant, though, then you might have issues (this case will in part determine what kinds of issues). Also, the copyrights for R are mainly held by the nonprofit R Foundation, not by Revolution Analytics: https://www.r-project.org/foundation/ https://www.r-project.org/foundation/. An API case from R copyright holders would additionally be really messy because a huge portion of the APIs originate in Bell Labs S, which they don't own the copyright to. Though there might be some sleeper case where whoever now owns the original S copyright pops up and sues R users for having cloned S's API...
qaq 9y ago
I bet Larry and Sergey are thinking we should have bought SUN.
- TremendousJudge 9y ago
  that would've been pretty cool. they had that kind of capital back then, right?
  - qaq 9y ago
    I think market cap of Google was close to 200B the deal was valued something like 7.5.
- geodel 9y ago
  Why? At worst Google will pay a couple billion for losing API suit. Oracle's patent suit already went down the tube. And by the time Oracle wins Java will be even less relevant for both Google and Oracle. Considering Oracle's Java business is sinking. They already threw away JavaEE to Eclipse and Cloud infra is heading Go way. So instead of being hobbled by Sun JDK design decisions they worked on Dalvik and Java like paraphernalia. And big success of Android is partially due to that.
  - qaq 9y ago
    Patents/IP rights. Very strong team of eng. a lot of cool tech.
  - qaq 9y ago
    and Sun's campus is now prob worth most of the original sales price.
resonanttoe 9y ago
Is that article two paragraphs long without source or attribution or am I doing the web wrong?
vijaybritto 9y ago
Will this push Google to move towards dart lang even more now?
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  Wouldn’t Kotlin be the more logical route?
  - kodablah 9y ago
    Doubt it if they still want the JVM. Sure Java the language is gone, but Kotlin on the JVM relies on the very non-Oracle-approved Java stdlib implementations that are at the root of this suit. If you want to argue Kotlin Native + NDK, sure, but it is very young (though I like it and have used it myself).
    - carussell 9y ago
      Today, Google is using the Oracle-approved form. They already switched Android from Harmony to OpenJDK in a previous release. Since then, this suit has been about (a) deciding whether Google is guilty of wrongdoing in the past, and (b) what the extent of the damages should be for that historical wrongdoing should be, if any. The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android (except if Google wanted to factor the suit into their decisionmaking for their own reasons).
      - kodablah 9y ago
        > The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android While most of your point is true, I disagree with this part. Using lawyers to tackle companies that succeed with only parts of your technology may send a chilling effect towards future uses. Also, knowing that you are not allowed to partake certain independent directions in the stack you choose for your devices is a legitimate reason to fear the continued use of that stack. Some are OK to them (e.g. conforming to the GPL on Linux) and some may not be (e.g. not being able to write portions of the stdlib without dealing w/ OpenJDK stewardship). I don't think these are their own reasons as much as they would be the reasons used by anyone who fears technologies stewarded by litigious outfits.
vardump 9y ago
Another reminder never to do business with Oracle.
- onetimemanytime 9y ago
  Oracle (Sun) paid probably hundreds of engineers to invent and maintain Java. As James Gosling says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... they gave away a lot but charged big companies to pay the expenses. Google should have paid that freaking licensing fee
  - jk563 9y ago
    Oracle paid for ammo it thought it could sue Google for.
bitwize 9y ago
Google shoulda thought twice before stealing Sun/Oracle's IP.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- loeg 9y ago
  The "stolen IP" is the API definitions, nothing more. rtype foobar(type baz); That's worth $8B to the appeals court, apparently.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  Yeah, “stealing” an API and open source, building a successful mobile UI platform (unlike personal/embedded java and Sun’s own failed attempts at fragmentation) and contributing it free back to open source where it has been used as a base OS for thousands of new products from TVs to drones.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    Regardless, the CAFC has ruled -- twice -- that APIs are subject to copyright. The Supremes are likely to deny cert again, so that stands as the law of the land. You steal someone's API, you pay a penalty. Don't like it? Write your Congressman.
    - jkaplowitz 9y ago
      Law of the case, not law of the land. This only stands as law of the land when the plaintiff manages to include a patent claim (even a weak one that later gets thrown out) to force the case under the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction, as happened here. They don't normally hear copyright cases. While I'm sure more such patent claims will get bundled with API copyright claims in the future where a plaintiff can credibly manage that, it's not otherwise the law of the land. (An aside: I think the Federal Circuit may have considered aspects of Ninth Circuit precedent in this ruling, as they're supposed to do for non-patent issues from the Ninth Circuit. Even they might rule differently in cases from other circuits, maybe just making it the law of cases they handle from the Ninth Circuit with significant persuasive impact on how they'd rule on cases from other circuits.) Eventually a normal Ninth (or other) Circuit panel will rule on this. They're not bound by the CAFC ruling, though they will undoubtedly consider it. As soon as one circuit rules otherwise, that will create a circuit split. Eventually, the Supreme Court will want to resolve that circuit split and will grant cert, either changing this bad precedent even for cases that go to the Federal Circuit or truly making it the law of the land. A Supreme Court ruling on this would only affect the current Oracle v Google case if it happens before this case is fully finalized, given the doctrine of res judicata. But it would help future cases, including between these parties about a different topic, as well as between Oracle and other companies about the Java API. With all of that said, contacting representatives in Congress and Senate to make explicit that APIs aren't copyrightable would still be great, as would narrowing the CAFC's jurisdictions to patent claims (and its otherwise specialized areas) or eliminating it entirely.
stephen 9y ago
I wonder how the $$ Google might pay to Oracle compares to the $$ it is spending to move away from Java by building replacements (v8, Go, Dart, Flutter/Fuschia, etc.) that are all essentially "GC languages with a great runtime VM". E.g. I can understand Oracle/Sun needing some amount of money for stewarding Java, as the teams required to build/maintain/QA/release the JVM were AFAIU in the hundreds, so not cheap. But "Java is free", so they didn't have a way for covering that cost from the majority of enterprise developers who were getting a free lunch, and instead relied on the J2ME licensing almost by accident/happenstance IMO. So now, companies like Google are not "paying for hundreds of Oracle/Sun engineers to develop a platform/language/ecosystem", but instead "paying hundreds of internal engineers to develop (multiple) platforms/languages/ecosystems". Which they can do, and still provide v8/Go/Dart/etc. "for free" because they have the luxury of paying for everything with ads, which Oracle/Sun didn't, which forced Oracle/Sun to commit the sin of asking for money. Granted, don't want to be an Oracle/Sun apologist b/c they messed up in a lot of ways (stagnated the language/etc., don't have a great reputation, etc.) and the competition/iteration of the next-gen languages like Kotlin/TypeScript/Go/etc. is working out great. Just interesting to think of the economic trade-off, e.g. if Oracle had been a little less controlling, and Google a little more willing to pay licensing/something, if the net effect would have been Java today being in a demonstrably stronger market position than it is. And, either way, the rest of us are still being spoiled by so many free lunches: amazing tech (languages/libraries/frameworks/ecosystems) built by professional teams that we don't pay a dime for.
- gsnedders 9y ago
  V8 has little to do with Oracle, fundamentally. V8 came about because they wanted a higher performance JS VM for their browser; the JVM was never in contention there.
  - admax88q 9y ago
    Sure it does. Why did they want a higher performance JS VM for the browser? The language of choice to build interactive applications on the web before JS was really viable was Java. A high performance JS VM means we don't need to use applets anymore.
redm 9y ago
I think the part that gets lost in all of this is that Sun offered to license Java to Google previously for $100M. [1] Google turned that down and bypassed Sun because they didn't want to pay (or license). At the time, Sun was happy to see Java being used by Google, even without the license. Still, Google knew exactly what they were doing. [2] My point is, they did this to themselves and they knew what they were possibly getting into. [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2509401/technology-law-regulation/google--sun-offered-to-license-java-for--100m.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2509401/technology-law... [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-oracle-not-sun-sued-google-over-java/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-oracle-not-sun-sued-google-ove... EDIT: Added the second reference and cleaned up thoughts. Included note regarded license as well as pay.
- Retric 9y ago
  That licence would have more restrictions in both the short and long term than just the upfront cost.
- kodablah 9y ago
  Call me naive, but is a company being happy with what you're doing to the tune of them even saying so (or representatives thereof) tantamount to an implicit contract? I know it's been argued in this case, but it strikes me as disingenuous at the least and fraudulent at the most to change your mind. Sure we don't mind Google bearing the brunt of this because they can, but how would we feel were a smaller company subject to this kind of bait and switch based on legalities?
  - josaka 9y ago
    It's not a contract, but there are other mechanism in the law to give effect to this intuition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
    - ineedasername 9y ago
      Estoppel: This my be my new favorite word. I can imagine all kinds of scenarios for use (okay, I can imagine one) "You can try to renege on your promises, but I'll estop you, I'll estop you once & for all!"
ryenus 9y ago
The worst decision Google ever made (2011) http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worst-decision-google-ever-made/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worst-decision-google-ever-...
Ajedi32 9y ago
I think the case was basically lost as soon as the court ruled that APIs are copyrightable. I still disagree with that decision, but once you've already arrived at that point then I think it's pretty hard to argue that Google's use of those APIs was fair use.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Why can't they appeal that ruling? It's completely wrong. EU got it right, and copyright lobby didn't manage to spoil it there.
  - Agathos 9y ago
    They did appeal, and the Supreme Court pretty much said they didn't want to look at this until a trial took place on the fair use question. Now that that's happened, I assume there will be another appeal to the Supreme Court.
    - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
      I sure hope so. That decision definitely needs to be appealed. I very much hope it's overturned. (The industry has pretty much assumed - and acted - that APIs were not copyrightable, and that's worked out all right. Suddenly shifting to APIs being copyrightable is going to cause some change the rules under existing activity, in ways that it's hard yet to define the full scope of.) But even if it's not, the decision needs to be appealed. Right now the situation is that APIs are copyrightable, but only for sure within one of the US Federal Court districts. In the other districts, they may be copyrightable. Or they may not be. If they aren't, then we have different law applying in different districts until the Supreme Court decides to resolve the issue. A Supreme Court decision now, one way or the other, would at least give resolution. (If they decide that APIs are copyrightable, then we'd have different law in the US and Europe, but at least it would be the same law everywhere in the US.) [Edit: Apparently this isn't in a district court, it's in the Federal Circuit, which handles patent cases.]
      - 9y ago
sqdbps 9y ago
This is ridiculous. Google won two jury trials and the CAFC has no business deciding copyright cases.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I honestly don't know if a jury is the right place to decide a copyright case. Essentially, we take an extremely complicated chunk of law, take twelve random people and explain the basics of it... and then ask them to decide on a super complicated edge case of it. Does this work well? I would argue Google is likely to win a jury case over Oracle in most cases because Google, at least until very recently, has widely been viewed as a "good" company, and is one that is popular with the average user.
- onetimemanytime 9y ago
  >>Google won two jury trials and the CAFC has no business deciding copyright cases. I think that's their only business, by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
  - guelo 9y ago
    It's a patent court, not copyrights.
  - wtallis 9y ago
    The CAFC is the appeals court for patents, which are not the same as copyrights. The local circuits handle copyright cases, except when there are also patent-related claims in the case. So if you are a plaintiff in a copyright lawsuit and you want your appeals to get the pro-IP biased treatment from the CAFC instead of going to the local circuit, make sure to find a way to include a patent claim in your suit.
nimbius 9y ago
from TFA: "Oracle claims Google was in such a rush in the mid-2000s to create an operating system for mobile devices that the company used key parts of copyrighted Java technology without paying royalties. " If this is true, it certainly isnt happening again. Google dominates smartphones and could very easily decide to phase out java for go/rust, torpedoing whatever rent-seeking strategy Oracle had originally devised. What oracle is attempting to do is nothing short of what Microsoft tried to do with TomTom's implementation of FAT. If BTRFS, percona, and maria are any indication its not the work that matters. Plenty of talented engineers are willing to devote their time and effort to avoiding Oracle. Quite frankly the Oracle Database has turned into a manacle for Ellison. Unable to prevent its inevitable loss to open source alternatives through NDA agreements that prohibit public release of independent Oracle performance tests, and unable to convince cloud-bound companies to continue forking out high dollar per-core licenses for it, The software exists as a 90s anachronism to the hubris of dotcom. Oracle Enterprise Linux was, for all its intentions, a flop, and after acquisition and rebranding MySQL is a withered husk compared to its open source counterparts.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > The software exists as a 90s anachronism to the hubris of dotcom. The point is that in BigCo environments the norm still is "no one ever got fired for buying IBM and Oracle" and even if that were not true shitloads of enterprise crapware are bound to Oracle's offerings and that alone will secure revenue for Oracle for decades to come. Hell when I look at the average age of stuff in the banking and insurance sector I would not be surprised if Oracle is still going strong in a century.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "If this is true, it certainly isnt happening again. Google dominates smartphones and could very easily decide to phase out java for go/rust, torpedoing whatever rent-seeking strategy Oracle had originally devised." Because wanting to be paid for one's work is "rent-seeking" now? And no, Google really couldn't. There's a huge library of Android applications that are using Java technologies to make them. Google can't replace Java with go/rust/dart without throwing all that away. They would have to continue to provide support, which would continue to put them in violation.
shmerl 9y ago
> There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform Someone should appeal and bust their case that claims that APIs are copyrightable. And don't forget those who supported this crookedness - Microsoft.
devit 9y ago
Is this going to the Supreme Court or is this the final decision?
- lmm 9y ago
  It's been sent back to the lower court to determine damages. After that Google can appeal to the Supreme Court if they can find some grounds on which to do so, and then the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear it or not.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    If I recall correctly, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the API copyright question until Google had lost on fair use. Well, Google has now lost on fair use. The Supreme Court may be willing to take the case now (that is, before going back to the lower court to determine damages).
JepZ 9y ago
OT: Thinking about API copyright I wonder how that is supposed to work in other programming languages e.g. Golang. Lets assume Google owns the copyright of the 'io.Writer' interface for the moment. Is everybody who has implemented a struct with a Writer method which satisfies the 'io.Writer' interface and as oracle stated it 'who wants to use them for a competing platform or to embed them in an electronic device' now (hypothetical) at risk of being prosecuted because they infringe Googles copyright? --- I am well aware that Google was the respondent in the Oracle vs. Google case.
- IAmEveryone 9y ago
  Short answer: no The law doesn't work as a set of naive rules like "If API->You need a license" because human life is full of nuances that can never be fully captured in a set of rigid rules. I know that people are uncomfortable with this truth, because our systems of courts often appears to the casual observer as just a bunch of "elders" making subjective decisions. Hence "smart contracts" etc. And while the criticism isn't completely wrong, the system as it exists in the US today is actually working quite well, with the professional ethos and rules of the court system being somewhat successful at overriding any individual judge's predilections. Anyway, in your case the difference is obviously one of scope. Even in the original ruling that affirmed APIs to be subject to copyright, the judge ultimately dismissed the case because they considered Google's actions to fall under "fair use". While this was now struck down on appeal, it is absolutely certain that copying a single method's signature would still be protected as fair use. Moreover, in the case you mention, a method such as File.write() would probably not fall under any copyright because there isn't much of any creativity involved.
  - JepZ 9y ago
    While I understand your point, your argument has very little foundation. You are basically saying: "Everything works very well and if a judge decides something you should respect that, as he has good reason to judge it his way". One thing I have a particular problem with is that even judges from the same country seem to come to different results on the same case. I know its not unusual but that underlines my point that just because some judge came to some verdict, it isn't necessarily true. And if 'the system as it exists in the US today is actually working quite well', why does a company like Google with a lot of smart people will have to pay a fine which probably will be as valuable as the whole Java platform? In a system that actually works well, the smart people would have seen what was going to happen and different judges would come to the same result. And that something as 'simple' as a single method interface doesn't require any creativity is just wrong. I am sure there are a lot of famous creator quotes about that, the first I was able to find is from Steve Jobs: Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [1] In the case of Golang that would translate to: It is much harder to build a universal single method interface for all kinds of write operations opposed to specific write methods for different use-cases. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445279-simple-can-be-harder-than-complex-you-have-to-work https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445279-simple-can-be-harder...
shadowmint 9y ago
So what now? An appeal of the appeal? This is the legal drama that never stops giving...
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  There are two next steps. One step is a retrial in the lower court, with fair use no longer a defense. The other is an appeal to the Supreme Court on whether an API can in fact be copyrighted. If the Supreme Court appeal happens, it probably puts the lower court trial on hold. If Google wins the appeal, then (I think) there's no case left to try in the lower court.
chvid 9y ago
I always wondered why Google didn't buy Sun when they had the chance? This (Android's use of Java) has always been a risk for Google. Either in form of the lawsuit but in more general what Oracle (or someone else) would do with Java. Anyways. I hope both companies are smart enough to settle this in a reasonable manner.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  They thought they could get away with it.
lambda 9y ago
The actual opinion (just posted, had checked a few minutes ago and it wasn't available yet): http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/17-1118.Opinion.3-26-2018.1.PDF http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...
Finnucane 9y ago
I suppose we could try lobbying Congress to change the copyright law to make an explicit provision for the fair use of software APIs. Hey! Stop laughing!
mrbill 9y ago
What's next? SCO winning an appeal? Sheesh.
danjoc 9y ago
Good. Initially, I thought the API decision was a bad one, but now I think the courts got it right. If you've ever wrestled long with getting a program to compile, you realize it's non-trivial to wrap your brain around complex types. The API is a language and the compiler is a runtime producing output. I can design my API in something like Java and return null from all the methods while I do it. The compiler will still produce expected results when I try to string bits of it together. For most languages, this work is hard, because everything is a runtime error from the compiler. There are elegant and inelegant ways to solve certain problems. The API determines that. It is itself a creative endeavor. Google was given the opportunity to license the API. They still can under GPL, but that means complying with GPL, which they evidently did not want to do. Ruling in favor of fair use here creates a vague double standard. Business models like that of MongoDB, who releases their code under GPL for open source projects and charges a license fee for private projects, would become questionable. "Well, you give it away already, so it's fair use to use it any way we like without paying you!"
- macspoofing 9y ago
  No. This decision upends decades of computing and programming culture for no discernible benefit to anyone (even Oracle).
- pcwalton 9y ago
  Would you apply your reasoning to JavaScript, so that Safari and Chrome would be illegal due to failure to obtain a license for the JS APIs? What about Linux? Linux copied the Unix syscall interface. What about Wine?
  - strcat 9y ago
    There's the reverse of Wine now too with Microsoft's clean room (non-GPL2 and not currently open source at all) implementation of the Linux kernel kernel <-> userspace ABI.
- carussell 9y ago
  > They still can under GPL, but that means complying with GPL, which they evidently did not want to do. Not true. Android has been exactly that since 2016. Harmony is dead (killed at the ASF, even), and Android is now using OpenJDK.
reacweb 9y ago
IMHO, Google has stolen a very tiny piece of Java that Google thought to be free (some judges agreed with this opinion). At the time of Sun, $100M was really excessive. I think this case should be the opportunity to fix a very very small punishment so that companies stop these frivolous litigations.
bitL 9y ago
What other law stuff is Oracle going to test now? They already know they can clone AWS/GCE API with no repercussions.
rb808 9y ago
Its really interesting how Microsoft changed their JVM into .net, with a nearly identical library API but so slightly different (often Upper case methods instead of lower case). Would be an interesting idea if Google could compile JVM bytecode apps to run on .net VM. Of course JSV8 engine would be better, but is more difficult.
- Leszek 9y ago
  Something like https://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/ https://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/ ?
  - rb808 9y ago
    Yes looks great. Blog post is 6 years old though, is it still valid?
igtztorrero 9y ago
Does anybody knows if API-REST are copyrighted ? The money they gona make !!
onetimemanytime 9y ago
Non-lawyer: is it over, as in Oracle won and judge must decide only the payment? Wiki says that Federal Circuit is the final for these things (I guess SCOTUS might review it...)
dec0dedab0de 9y ago
I'm conflicted on this. A. I don't like that APIs are copywrite-able. B. I wish Google complied with the GPL anyway. I hate this anti-GPL sentiment that has been going around the last 10 years or so. C. The android play store would probably go through a renaissance if all the apps had to be rewritten. D. I don't trust Google, but I really really really don't like Oracle.
- hasahmed 9y ago
  Taking sides of definitely a question of the lesser of two evils on this one.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- guelo 9y ago
  B. Java is not licensed under the GPL. C. Not going to happen.
  - merb 9y ago
    B. Java is not licensed under the GPL. OpenJDK is.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      OpenJDK didn't exist when Google developed Android, so it would have been very hard for them to use it.
      - dec0dedab0de 9y ago
        The first commercial release of android was 2008, the first release of openjdk was 2006. It wouldn't be that hard to start with an openjdk repo, and delete all the files as you added in the davlik code. Release it as GPL, and call it a derivative work. Not that I think they should have to do that just for the sake of implementing the API
deleted 9y ago
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guelo 9y ago
What is the point of a copyright or patent trial if the biased Federal Circuit can just overturn the jury verdict? It's an straightforward violation of the 7th amendment.
ABCLAW 9y ago
It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/17-1118.Opinion.3-26-2018.1.PDF http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that it isn't commercial. Bzzt. Nope. You don't need direct monetization to make something commercial. Was it transformative? They verbatim copied shit. Google claimed it was transformative because they used it in smartphones, yo. No. You guys who think patents that slap "but use a computer to do it" onto the end of some existing process are bad? Google's trying to say the same thing per computer form factor. 2) Nature of the Copyrighted Work: Dealt with previously - APIs are copyrightable. Lots of people have an issue with this, but the previous opinions on that point are where you should go for material on that point. 3) Amount and Substantiality: Bad faith usage came out around neutral; wasn't a huge amount copied but it was important material, as admitted by Google themselves. 4) Effect on Work's Value: Direct evidence of market harm demonstrated by showing that Amazon leveraged Google's infringement to lower their license payment. Slam dunk. Overall, I agree with the other posters indicating that once API copyrights were upheld that this was going to be a clear loser for Google. Maybe they'll get cert and have the supreme court take a look at this following the re-trial.
- dmix 9y ago
  What exactly was 'copied' by Google? Was it actual code directly copied or just the general design / APIs that were mirrored by their Android Java playform?
  - moomin 9y ago
    The Java API definition.
    - suyash 9y ago
      Google stole Java and it's time for them to Pay up BIG MONEY!
endangered 9y ago
How about we stop using Java. It's a terrible language anyways.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  For programming phones, what language do you like better?
  - cbhl 9y ago
    JavaScript! /s
  - leadingthenet 9y ago
    Swift is nice.
- suyash 9y ago
  It's the world's number 1 langauge by many standards.
- quantumhobbit 9y ago
  I hate the whole api copyright stuff, but part if me is hoping this leads to a decline in popularity of Java. I don’t even hate Java that much I just hate the Java is the only “serious programming language” attitude so common in this industry.
mtberatwork 9y ago
> Part of Google’s defense focused on the idea that Java was developed for desktop computers, while Android was created for phones and other mobile devices. Is this really the best defense? The tag line is "write once, run anywhere" after all. I remember back in my CS days (mid/late 90s) when Java was first being pushed at my uni, the overly-enthusiastic vibe even back then was that Java would eventually be found everywhere, even in mundane devices like toasters and coffee machines.
- icebraining 9y ago
  True, but the version of Java for phones was J2ME, which was different from J2SE. Android implemented the API of the latter.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Sun was in the process of using J2SE, based on the assets they bought from SavaJE, which incidentally had an architecture quite similar to the first Android versions.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Was the TCK changed to allow for that?
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        No idea.
TuringNYC 9y ago
Perhaps this is a naive question - but amongst the hundreds of of things Google has invented or has patents on, isn't there something they can find that Oracle has trampled on, and then use it as a negotiation tactic for making this all go away? e.g., If an API can be copyrighted, can a container registry interface also be copyrighted? I agree, this is all stupid, but i'm asking this from the perspective of just finding examples to allow all parties to back off.
- carussell 9y ago
  Settling out of court at this point would not be a good result, since the most important thing that will come out of this is the legal precedent.
stephen 9y ago
I agree it seems that way, but IMO JavaScript/v8 only exists (or is only the defacto client-side runtime) because Sun/Oracle messed up the Java/JVM trajectory at least twice. 1) was Sun making applets suck so bad, e.g. the JVM itself was too slow pre-JIT, classloading over the wire sucked, DOM interaction was hard (AFAIU/IIRC), etc. I don't think any of these problems were fundamental to "put a VM in the browser", as conceptually Java & JS VMs aren't that different: the trade-offs JS/Brendan picked just worked better. 2) was Oracle being so lawsuit happy, as I think Dart could have been "just a faster/better browser-based JVM" (basically applets done right/with a great pre-JIT JVM) and not the combined "new language + new VM + new ecosystem", had Google felt comfortable using the Java language. It would have made a ton of sense, to reuse all their existing/internal Java tooling/knowledge/etc. But not with Oracle already breathing down their neck re Android. Anyway, agreed it doesn't seem that way, but I think v8's success is actually more related to Sun/Oracle/Java's mistakes/missed opportunities than is initially apparent. Not complaining, as we're in a great place now with v8/TypeScript/React Native being basically "the VM + type-safe language + framework that Java could have been", but with legitimately awesome features e.g. TS's type system, RN hot loading, etc.
mjw1007 9y ago
The question of API copyrightability seems to have been a big failure of the legislation-and-precedent system. The theory is that instead of the legislature trying to think through all the corner cases ahead of time, they pass a somewhat vaguer act and leave the courts to sort out some test cases; then in a reasonable amount of time clarity is supposed to emerge. But it's been 40 years since the world decided that it would "protect" computer programs as if they were literary works, and 30 years since most people thought that the question of API copyrightability was settled, and it turns out that we never got clarity at all. Having judges trying to determine the question by deciding whether APIs are analogous to chapter titles or plot points in Harry Potter books is just ridiculous.
tapirl 9y ago
If Google gives up Java for Android now, Java will drop out of top-5 languages in 5 years.
DannyBee 9y ago
Federal circuit decides to not properly apply ninth circuit law again, news at 11.
thisacctforreal 9y ago
Will this have any reprocussions for AWS drop-in replacements?
AaronFriel 9y ago
Can IBM enforce API copyright against BIOS vendors under this doctrine? Does this revive the SCO linux case? Who owns the copyright for POSIX/UNIX system APIs? What about cloud provider compatibility shims, e.g.: S3 reimplementations or Localstack? I am left with nothing but more questions about the broadness of this decision.
oldandtired 9y ago
The problem for ORACLE is that if they win, they will have a Pyrrhic victory. The old adage of "Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it" applies here. Greed has consequences and greed will be the undoing.
cabaalis 9y ago
So, for those like me who don't quite understand all the legalese: I've been operating under the belief that APIs and protocol "structures" were ruled as "non-copyright-able" before, while "implementations" absolutely were copyright-able. Was I wrong then, or am I wrong now?
- brann0 9y ago
  Same situation here. What changed since last trial? Wasn't Oracle demand based on software patents? I'm confused...
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  They were considered non-copyrightable before. Then, in a surprise to many, they were ruled copyrightable in this case. So far, the ruling only applies in the Federal Circuit. And you only get into the Federal Circuit when there is a patent aspect to the case. But a forum-shopping litigant could have a patent claim to the case, drop it part way through, and still wind up in the Federal Circuit on appeal (which, if I understand correctly, is exactly what happened in this case).
jrpelkonen 9y ago
I am not a lawyer, but I wonder if Google could counter sue Oracle on the basis that that Java now implements some methods originally introduced in Google Guava?
larryfreeman 9y ago
This is a big shame. If only Google had purchased Sun Microsystems all this wouldn't have happened. Sun was fine with what Google was doing. When Oracle purchased Sun, it gained the rights to Sun's intellectual property and decided that it had a case against Google. http://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-ceo-explicitly-endorsed-javas-use-in-android-what-do-you-say-now-oracle/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-ceo-explicitly-endorsed-jav...
gaius 9y ago
I propose a compromise: fine Google billions of dollars, but it goes to the taxman, not Oracle
jbritton 9y ago
I just hope we don't get to the place where basic function names are copyrighted, like add, insert, delete, remove, push, pop, sort, map, filter, foldl, foldr. I hope library writers don't have to pull out a thesaurus.
hennsen 9y ago
I admit i don’t understand the details of that case fully and have no time to waste to change that... What i can say: To me it seems like oracle only bought Sun to squeeze out money from it’s “intellectual property” as hard as possible, giving a shit for all the(not fully finished) work Sun did in the years before to make Java a good Open Source citizen that could easily delivered in Linux distributions. The very first thing oracle did was making that harder again and limiting access to the compatibility test suite. Oracle is a greedy company that doesn’t care about anything than making more money, no matter what it costs and no respect to any otger party in no way. They give not the slightest F about being a good OpenSource citizen, in no area where they enter that ecosystem. And their products might have some nice features sometimes but in the end are hard to handle/install/maintain expensive crap. I didn’t write a 100 lines of Java since they own it, and i try to avoid it wherever i can find a viable alternative.
grellas 9y ago
Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact". There is a reason for this: if it were the rule that an appellate court could easily step in and second-guess how a jury weighs evidence, there would be little room for finality with jury verdicts because lawyers are very skilled (and become very tiresome) endlessly arguing why this or that fact is better than another and why a court should weigh things differently than the way a jury did. In this case, the Federal Circuit Court did what amounted a wholesale second-guessing of what the jury concluded about the facts here. I am not saying the issues were not complex and that it had absolutely no basis for coming to different conclusions. But the zeal with which this particular court upholds IP absolutism is truly a marvel. This is the court that gave us the frivolous patent bonanza dating back to 1990s by which "everything under the sun" became patentable and many suffered for years from the consequent harm. So too with the way it is handling copyright law in this Oracle/Google dispute. Yes, by all means, let us protect the hell out of APIs and invite endless future litigation that ensures that easy connectivity in the computer world will no longer depend on engineers but on lawyers. And let us say that "no reasonable jury" could possibly conclude that copying even a tiny amount of code could possibly be "quantitatively insignificant" so as to shield the one doing the copying from claims of copyright infringement, all the better to ensure that future lawyers can conjure up infringement claims from all sorts of seemingly quantitatively trivial copying. I deliberately exaggerate in how I characterize this decision knowing that it glosses over all sorts of fine points that are the subject of profound argument among lawyers. But I do so to capture the spirit of this decision and what decisions like this mean for computing generally. Yes, a very broad theory of what is patentable can readily be defended in the name of protecting IP rights and lawyers can come up with endless arguments for why this should be so. So too can lawyers make convincing arguments for very broad theories of copyrightability and very narrow readings of fair use. In both cases, the law protecting IP gets an expansive reading. Well, speaking as one who has tilled this soil for a long time and who very much supports and sees the need for strong support of IP rights, I can only say that the Federal Circuit Court has proven to be a largely counter-productive force in serving as a specialized court dealing with IP among federal courts. This ruling will do what its prior expansive reading of patent law did: it will set up a legal standard that invites lawyers and litigants to engage in endless second-guessing over copyright and fair use in areas of connectivity and inter-operability in the computing world and this in turn, as a standing invitation to litigate, cannot be good for future development.
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romanovcode 9y ago
I bet google wishes now they'd picked .NET for Android.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  Why would Google want to use a language that is encumbered with patent promises and made by a company that has a history of shaking down Android OEM's?
fauigerzigerk 9y ago
So does IBM now have an enforceable copyright on SQL that Oracle infringed upon?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  People keep bringing SQL up, yet don't realize that SQL is an international standard which one needs to pay ISO for, and also to pay for certifications. Oracle has payed for SQL. Google has not payed for Java.
  - fauigerzigerk 9y ago
    The first SQL ISO standard is from 1987. Oracle's first commercial SQL DBMS came out eight years earlier in 1979. In 1987, Oracle was already the largest database vendor and IBM's database business never recovered from that setback. That said, I don't know if Oracle had some sort of licensing agreement with IBM during those early years. The question is what any such agreement would have looked like in light of the recent legal opinions on copyright.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Contrary to FOSS myths, SQL ISO standards aren't free and don't write by themselves, Oracle had a seat at the table just like everyone else that matters on the RDMS space. IBM is doing pretty fine with DB 2 and Informix.
sroussey 9y ago
I wonder if the meaning of this ruling will leak to other areas. For example, is “boilerplate” in contracts and other legal documents copyrightable? Who owns them? The lawyers, the law firms, the clients? Will attorneys pay other attorneys to use the same phrases and paragraphs?
andybak 9y ago
I just read the sub-thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 onwards and started nodding in agreement at the fine arguments therein. But then sanity hit me in the face like a damp glacier and I remembered the 9 lines of code in question. Please anyone who's ever programmed anything; take a step back and tell me this is sane. Tell me there's not a billion cases like this out there waiting for a lawyer to unearth them. However persuasive the step by step logic seems, it's the same step by step that paves the road to hell. If logic, reason and law bring us to this point then it's logic, reason and law that need to be carefully reexamined.
- ggm 9y ago
  Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there are a rough Fermi-number million or more, of this kind of event, and this decision, which most people in the practice of writing software would consider a massive reversal, quite aside from being a retrograde step, implies that both sides of the deal are now in some sense duty-bound to investigate. You could be the unwitting, unintending offendor by trivial API copying, entirely normal in your prior working experiences. You could now be the person who has to inform senior staff that due to this decision, code your company owns as IPR is the subject of this kind of copying. Think about it: If you discovered that any activity you did was now potentially valuable in a lawsuit to generate income, by what right do you not inform senior staff? What you feel about the lawsuit is distinct from your obligation as a company officer, regarding its status surely?
kraig911 9y ago
I've read all the ideas around why or why not Google is liable or Oracle is being frivolous... Can an "Expert" tell me what would happen to Google(and Android by Association) if Oracle won full out? Besides the paying out of billion(s).
ebcode 9y ago
It is time. #deleteoracle
- hjklasdf 9y ago
  Or we should blacklist any former Oracle employee whose tenure covers 2018. Who are these people who are staying? What does it say about their values?
nojvek 9y ago
With Oracle slapping patent infringements left and right for Java APIs, I predict in the next decade JAVA will sort of become irrelevant. I hope more universities are taking note of this and not teaching JAVA to first year students. I also hope Oracle burns to ground in a decade.
didibus 9y ago
What if this ends up true. Can Google just prefix all namespaces with google. ? So now the API names are all changed. Basically, if API are copyrightable, whats the minimal change to not consider it a copy? com.oracle.String/lowerCase Could this become com.google.String/lowerCase So now the name is changed? Or does this all now becomes a case of any similarity can be sued and on a case by case basis courts will jusge if its too similar or not enough?
todd8 9y ago
I used to keep a couple of 9-track tapes (see [1]) of the code I had written. Too bad I don’t have them anymore, I probably had some 50 year old API I came up with that someone somewhere violated. If that seems absurd, consider how few people were programming back then and how fundamental and basic the APIs were. It’s worse than the patent mess. At least patents expire in 20 years! Copyright for those 1970s APIs will belong to my heirs for 50 years after I die! (see the Mickey Mouse law [2]). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=mickey+mouse+copyright+law&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=mickey+mouse+copyright+law&i...
julienfr112 9y ago
Could Oracle be sued on the usage of SQL with it's products ? Or did they paid something to Ibm to use it ?

778 points by uptown 9y ago

> The case was remanded to a federal court in California to determine how much the Alphabet Inc. unit should pay. No Google is not going to pay billion dollars, not yet. Very clickbaity title.

protonimitate 9y ago
Title is perfectly accurate imo. The case originally had Oracle seeking 8.8b in damages. Oracle won the revival. Therefore Oracle won the revival of a billion dollar case. The title does not state or imply that google will pay the full amount, only that the case is not dead. I know, click bait is bad, but it really irks me that people on HN are so quick to pull the 'click-bait' card for no reason. Would a different title really change anyone's interpretation of the article? I don't think so.
haZard_OS 9y ago
How is the title click-bait? It doesn't say that Google will pay billions. It says it is a billion-dollar case...and it is (at least potentially). If this meets your definition of "very clickbaity" then where could you go to avoid click-bait?!
coding123 9y ago
Well it's 25% clickbaity IMO - it was the billion dollar case, but perhaps "Java Copyright Case" would have been better.

bitcharmer 9y ago

It's a shame that there was no one like judge Alsup in the appeals court. Now it's about legal phrases and licensing terms instead of common sense all over again.

BoorishBears 9y ago
Unpopular opinion: I feel Google should be punished for what they did to Java. Maybe the mechanism being used is wrong, but Android bastardized Java and as an Android developer I feel real damage has been done to the health of the Java ecosystem by having billions of devices run fragmented Java-but-not-Java. Google has started to make it right with the switch to openJDK and Desugar, but in a lot of ways it’s too little very late.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  So you want Swing apps on Android?
  - anonymouse12 9y ago
    Quit shilling for your employer. No one takes this argument about a piece of technology (swing) that has not been relevant for over a decade and a half seriously. Look up the history of innovations that Java and in particular the hotspot JVM brought to the mainstream. Enough with this false narrative that java and the jvm sucked and was in decline and Google swooped in and saved it. Some of the creators of your beloved V8 and Go Lang were the very same folks who helped create the hotspot JVM. Google basically pulled a fast one by not buying a license and they knew the consequences even at the time this occurred.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    Someone flagged the comment before I could post my response, but here it was (re: Google didn't save Java on the client): Java on the server was not in decline, but Java on the desktop was declining, had declined. Applets were dead, very few success stories around Java Web Start. And the main three 'consumer' success stories for Java on the frontend were Limewire, Minecraft, and IntelliJ/Eclipse. As a consumer facing technology, Java was a complete failure. No sane person wanting to ship a commercial, consumer app to end users would consider Java as a first choice. I have been a Java developer from the day HotSpot Alpha was released, I say this as someone who loves the platform. Personal Java failed. I worked for years on J2ME apps, Java on high end Nokia Phones, Java on Palm devices (Ghost VM), etc. All these platforms amounted to nada. Flash was far more widely used for front end user facing apps than Java. Ditto for Visual Basic. The relevance of the Swing comment is the people complaining about the fragmentation of Java's write-once-run-anywhere promise, which was always more of a promise than a reality. If you want to make a viable mobile Java, you had to remove Swing, Java2D, CORBA, JMX, and a ton of other JDK libraries, which is exactly what Sun did with the various profiles as well. But once you do that, you have "fragmentation" If Google had not produced Android, I can bet the leading platform today for mobile development that is not from Apple, would either be Xamarin based C#, or some scripting language like Lua or Python on top of a Linux widget toolkit. Java would not be in the mix at all. Or perhaps it would FlashMX sitting on top of Linux (ugh)

readhn 9y ago

Does oracle have a case or not? If you were Oracle, would you be ok not taking this to court?

dbbk 9y ago
They clearly have a case because they just won it.
- Ajedi32 9y ago
  Yeah, seems a little strange to ask a question like that after the court already ruled in their favor. Whether you like it or not, clearly they did have a case.
Yetanfou 9y ago
In this field "having a case" depends not so much on objective truth but on subjective narrative, having enough money to pay more lawyers for a longer time than the opponent, finding the right judge, making sure the jury is stuffed according to plan and more of such skullduggery. If it were about objective facts the case would have been over and done with in a month with a definite conclusion, either it being OK to use API's without licensing or it being a violation to do so. If the outcome were the latter there would have been some bickering over how much to pay for said violation, add another month for that. Alas, this is not about objective truth and "having a case". It is the result of a free but regulated market being infected by a parasitic organism which has turned the regulator's defence mechanisms to its own purpose, the which being the extraction of as much value as feasible while keeping the host alive.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  The question here is not so much one of fact, but one of law. And stuffing the jury isn't an issue with the appeals court.

todd3834 9y ago

I’m not sure if I have the timeline correct but I thought Java was owned by Sun Microsystems at the time when they made these decisions. I’m sure they rightly assumed Sun Microsystems would never do this. It is sad to see what Oracle is doing with Sun Microsystem’s creation.

ProAm 9y ago
This is what Oracle does with every acquisition. You wring as much revenue out of a product as possible and when you cant get anymore you toss it aside and go acquire another product/company. This is what will happen to Netsuite which was recently acquired.
malux85 9y ago
It is sad. When I was young, about 16-19, I had a friend who worked for Sun Microsystems and he was an amazing mentor, and maybe twice a year I got to meet some of his colleagues too. They embodied 'the hacker' spirit that I believe hacker news represents - long grey hair, very open minded, very friendly, and loved being passionate about tech discussions while keeping an open mind and a willingness to be wrong. These people turned me into who I am today by showing me a form of non-vain, open, intellectual curiosity that I try and emulate - the persons age, race, gender, religion -- all irrelevant -- it was about the ideas. Though they would look down on you if you used the wrong editor (go vi!) but they would smile and show you the way.
- pgwhalen 9y ago
  I don’t mean to be overly negative, but I hope you recognize the irony in describing your image of a hacker as someone with long, grey hair, and proceeding to say that superficial traits like appearance don’t matter, only ideas.
  - malux85 9y ago
    I did notice that after submitting it, and made a mental note in correcting it in the future. It was more for comic effect / appeal to stereotype - but that failure is mine. I'm always learning :)

amrrs 9y ago

I'm worried if this is again going to pose serious problems in using open source stack and building profitable solutions. So, If I'm going to build something profitable using R and Tensorflow/Keras then someday I could be sued by the consortium or Microsoft that owns Revolution Analytics (that controls R) ?

fwgwgwgch 9y ago
Just checked Wikipedia and Microsoft indeed owns RA which "own" R. Interesting. On the other it's not about open source. If you're willing to license stuff in good faith you should be fine.
_delirium 9y ago
R is GPL, so as long as you're complying with the GPL terms in your use of it or derivative works, you're fine. If you make your own API-compatible reimplementation of R that isn't covered under the GPL's permission grant, though, then you might have issues (this case will in part determine what kinds of issues). Also, the copyrights for R are mainly held by the nonprofit R Foundation, not by Revolution Analytics: https://www.r-project.org/foundation/ https://www.r-project.org/foundation/. An API case from R copyright holders would additionally be really messy because a huge portion of the APIs originate in Bell Labs S, which they don't own the copyright to. Though there might be some sleeper case where whoever now owns the original S copyright pops up and sues R users for having cloned S's API...

qaq 9y ago

I bet Larry and Sergey are thinking we should have bought SUN.

TremendousJudge 9y ago
that would've been pretty cool. they had that kind of capital back then, right?
- qaq 9y ago
  I think market cap of Google was close to 200B the deal was valued something like 7.5.
geodel 9y ago
Why? At worst Google will pay a couple billion for losing API suit. Oracle's patent suit already went down the tube. And by the time Oracle wins Java will be even less relevant for both Google and Oracle. Considering Oracle's Java business is sinking. They already threw away JavaEE to Eclipse and Cloud infra is heading Go way. So instead of being hobbled by Sun JDK design decisions they worked on Dalvik and Java like paraphernalia. And big success of Android is partially due to that.
- qaq 9y ago
  Patents/IP rights. Very strong team of eng. a lot of cool tech.
- qaq 9y ago
  and Sun's campus is now prob worth most of the original sales price.

resonanttoe 9y ago

Is that article two paragraphs long without source or attribution or am I doing the web wrong?

vijaybritto 9y ago

Will this push Google to move towards dart lang even more now?

jsjohnst 9y ago
Wouldn’t Kotlin be the more logical route?
- kodablah 9y ago
  Doubt it if they still want the JVM. Sure Java the language is gone, but Kotlin on the JVM relies on the very non-Oracle-approved Java stdlib implementations that are at the root of this suit. If you want to argue Kotlin Native + NDK, sure, but it is very young (though I like it and have used it myself).
  - carussell 9y ago
    Today, Google is using the Oracle-approved form. They already switched Android from Harmony to OpenJDK in a previous release. Since then, this suit has been about (a) deciding whether Google is guilty of wrongdoing in the past, and (b) what the extent of the damages should be for that historical wrongdoing should be, if any. The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android (except if Google wanted to factor the suit into their decisionmaking for their own reasons).
    - kodablah 9y ago
      > The outcome here doesn't really have any impact on the future of Android While most of your point is true, I disagree with this part. Using lawyers to tackle companies that succeed with only parts of your technology may send a chilling effect towards future uses. Also, knowing that you are not allowed to partake certain independent directions in the stack you choose for your devices is a legitimate reason to fear the continued use of that stack. Some are OK to them (e.g. conforming to the GPL on Linux) and some may not be (e.g. not being able to write portions of the stdlib without dealing w/ OpenJDK stewardship). I don't think these are their own reasons as much as they would be the reasons used by anyone who fears technologies stewarded by litigious outfits.

vardump 9y ago

Another reminder never to do business with Oracle.

onetimemanytime 9y ago
Oracle (Sun) paid probably hundreds of engineers to invent and maintain Java. As James Gosling says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... they gave away a lot but charged big companies to pay the expenses. Google should have paid that freaking licensing fee
- jk563 9y ago
  Oracle paid for ammo it thought it could sue Google for.

bitwize 9y ago

Google shoulda thought twice before stealing Sun/Oracle's IP.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
loeg 9y ago
The "stolen IP" is the API definitions, nothing more. rtype foobar(type baz); That's worth $8B to the appeals court, apparently.
cromwellian 9y ago
Yeah, “stealing” an API and open source, building a successful mobile UI platform (unlike personal/embedded java and Sun’s own failed attempts at fragmentation) and contributing it free back to open source where it has been used as a base OS for thousands of new products from TVs to drones.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Regardless, the CAFC has ruled -- twice -- that APIs are subject to copyright. The Supremes are likely to deny cert again, so that stands as the law of the land. You steal someone's API, you pay a penalty. Don't like it? Write your Congressman.
  - jkaplowitz 9y ago
    Law of the case, not law of the land. This only stands as law of the land when the plaintiff manages to include a patent claim (even a weak one that later gets thrown out) to force the case under the Federal Circuit's jurisdiction, as happened here. They don't normally hear copyright cases. While I'm sure more such patent claims will get bundled with API copyright claims in the future where a plaintiff can credibly manage that, it's not otherwise the law of the land. (An aside: I think the Federal Circuit may have considered aspects of Ninth Circuit precedent in this ruling, as they're supposed to do for non-patent issues from the Ninth Circuit. Even they might rule differently in cases from other circuits, maybe just making it the law of cases they handle from the Ninth Circuit with significant persuasive impact on how they'd rule on cases from other circuits.) Eventually a normal Ninth (or other) Circuit panel will rule on this. They're not bound by the CAFC ruling, though they will undoubtedly consider it. As soon as one circuit rules otherwise, that will create a circuit split. Eventually, the Supreme Court will want to resolve that circuit split and will grant cert, either changing this bad precedent even for cases that go to the Federal Circuit or truly making it the law of the land. A Supreme Court ruling on this would only affect the current Oracle v Google case if it happens before this case is fully finalized, given the doctrine of res judicata. But it would help future cases, including between these parties about a different topic, as well as between Oracle and other companies about the Java API. With all of that said, contacting representatives in Congress and Senate to make explicit that APIs aren't copyrightable would still be great, as would narrowing the CAFC's jurisdictions to patent claims (and its otherwise specialized areas) or eliminating it entirely.

stephen 9y ago

I wonder how the $$ Google might pay to Oracle compares to the $$ it is spending to move away from Java by building replacements (v8, Go, Dart, Flutter/Fuschia, etc.) that are all essentially "GC languages with a great runtime VM". E.g. I can understand Oracle/Sun needing some amount of money for stewarding Java, as the teams required to build/maintain/QA/release the JVM were AFAIU in the hundreds, so not cheap. But "Java is free", so they didn't have a way for covering that cost from the majority of enterprise developers who were getting a free lunch, and instead relied on the J2ME licensing almost by accident/happenstance IMO. So now, companies like Google are not "paying for hundreds of Oracle/Sun engineers to develop a platform/language/ecosystem", but instead "paying hundreds of internal engineers to develop (multiple) platforms/languages/ecosystems". Which they can do, and still provide v8/Go/Dart/etc. "for free" because they have the luxury of paying for everything with ads, which Oracle/Sun didn't, which forced Oracle/Sun to commit the sin of asking for money. Granted, don't want to be an Oracle/Sun apologist b/c they messed up in a lot of ways (stagnated the language/etc., don't have a great reputation, etc.) and the competition/iteration of the next-gen languages like Kotlin/TypeScript/Go/etc. is working out great. Just interesting to think of the economic trade-off, e.g. if Oracle had been a little less controlling, and Google a little more willing to pay licensing/something, if the net effect would have been Java today being in a demonstrably stronger market position than it is. And, either way, the rest of us are still being spoiled by so many free lunches: amazing tech (languages/libraries/frameworks/ecosystems) built by professional teams that we don't pay a dime for.

gsnedders 9y ago
V8 has little to do with Oracle, fundamentally. V8 came about because they wanted a higher performance JS VM for their browser; the JVM was never in contention there.
- admax88q 9y ago
  Sure it does. Why did they want a higher performance JS VM for the browser? The language of choice to build interactive applications on the web before JS was really viable was Java. A high performance JS VM means we don't need to use applets anymore.

redm 9y ago

I think the part that gets lost in all of this is that Sun offered to license Java to Google previously for $100M. [1] Google turned that down and bypassed Sun because they didn't want to pay (or license). At the time, Sun was happy to see Java being used by Google, even without the license. Still, Google knew exactly what they were doing. [2] My point is, they did this to themselves and they knew what they were possibly getting into. [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2509401/technology-law-regulation/google--sun-offered-to-license-java-for--100m.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/2509401/technology-law... [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/why-oracle-not-sun-sued-google-over-java/ https://www.cnet.com/news/why-oracle-not-sun-sued-google-ove... EDIT: Added the second reference and cleaned up thoughts. Included note regarded license as well as pay.

Retric 9y ago
That licence would have more restrictions in both the short and long term than just the upfront cost.
kodablah 9y ago
Call me naive, but is a company being happy with what you're doing to the tune of them even saying so (or representatives thereof) tantamount to an implicit contract? I know it's been argued in this case, but it strikes me as disingenuous at the least and fraudulent at the most to change your mind. Sure we don't mind Google bearing the brunt of this because they can, but how would we feel were a smaller company subject to this kind of bait and switch based on legalities?
- josaka 9y ago
  It's not a contract, but there are other mechanism in the law to give effect to this intuition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel
  - ineedasername 9y ago
    Estoppel: This my be my new favorite word. I can imagine all kinds of scenarios for use (okay, I can imagine one) "You can try to renege on your promises, but I'll estop you, I'll estop you once & for all!"

ryenus 9y ago

The worst decision Google ever made (2011) http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worst-decision-google-ever-made/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-worst-decision-google-ever-...

Ajedi32 9y ago

I think the case was basically lost as soon as the court ruled that APIs are copyrightable. I still disagree with that decision, but once you've already arrived at that point then I think it's pretty hard to argue that Google's use of those APIs was fair use.

shmerl 9y ago
Why can't they appeal that ruling? It's completely wrong. EU got it right, and copyright lobby didn't manage to spoil it there.
- Agathos 9y ago
  They did appeal, and the Supreme Court pretty much said they didn't want to look at this until a trial took place on the fair use question. Now that that's happened, I assume there will be another appeal to the Supreme Court.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    I sure hope so. That decision definitely needs to be appealed. I very much hope it's overturned. (The industry has pretty much assumed - and acted - that APIs were not copyrightable, and that's worked out all right. Suddenly shifting to APIs being copyrightable is going to cause some change the rules under existing activity, in ways that it's hard yet to define the full scope of.) But even if it's not, the decision needs to be appealed. Right now the situation is that APIs are copyrightable, but only for sure within one of the US Federal Court districts. In the other districts, they may be copyrightable. Or they may not be. If they aren't, then we have different law applying in different districts until the Supreme Court decides to resolve the issue. A Supreme Court decision now, one way or the other, would at least give resolution. (If they decide that APIs are copyrightable, then we'd have different law in the US and Europe, but at least it would be the same law everywhere in the US.) [Edit: Apparently this isn't in a district court, it's in the Federal Circuit, which handles patent cases.]
    - 9y ago

sqdbps 9y ago

This is ridiculous. Google won two jury trials and the CAFC has no business deciding copyright cases.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I honestly don't know if a jury is the right place to decide a copyright case. Essentially, we take an extremely complicated chunk of law, take twelve random people and explain the basics of it... and then ask them to decide on a super complicated edge case of it. Does this work well? I would argue Google is likely to win a jury case over Oracle in most cases because Google, at least until very recently, has widely been viewed as a "good" company, and is one that is popular with the average user.
onetimemanytime 9y ago
>>Google won two jury trials and the CAFC has no business deciding copyright cases. I think that's their only business, by design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals...
- guelo 9y ago
  It's a patent court, not copyrights.
- wtallis 9y ago
  The CAFC is the appeals court for patents, which are not the same as copyrights. The local circuits handle copyright cases, except when there are also patent-related claims in the case. So if you are a plaintiff in a copyright lawsuit and you want your appeals to get the pro-IP biased treatment from the CAFC instead of going to the local circuit, make sure to find a way to include a patent claim in your suit.

nimbius 9y ago

from TFA: "Oracle claims Google was in such a rush in the mid-2000s to create an operating system for mobile devices that the company used key parts of copyrighted Java technology without paying royalties. " If this is true, it certainly isnt happening again. Google dominates smartphones and could very easily decide to phase out java for go/rust, torpedoing whatever rent-seeking strategy Oracle had originally devised. What oracle is attempting to do is nothing short of what Microsoft tried to do with TomTom's implementation of FAT. If BTRFS, percona, and maria are any indication its not the work that matters. Plenty of talented engineers are willing to devote their time and effort to avoiding Oracle. Quite frankly the Oracle Database has turned into a manacle for Ellison. Unable to prevent its inevitable loss to open source alternatives through NDA agreements that prohibit public release of independent Oracle performance tests, and unable to convince cloud-bound companies to continue forking out high dollar per-core licenses for it, The software exists as a 90s anachronism to the hubris of dotcom. Oracle Enterprise Linux was, for all its intentions, a flop, and after acquisition and rebranding MySQL is a withered husk compared to its open source counterparts.

mschuster91 9y ago
> The software exists as a 90s anachronism to the hubris of dotcom. The point is that in BigCo environments the norm still is "no one ever got fired for buying IBM and Oracle" and even if that were not true shitloads of enterprise crapware are bound to Oracle's offerings and that alone will secure revenue for Oracle for decades to come. Hell when I look at the average age of stuff in the banking and insurance sector I would not be surprised if Oracle is still going strong in a century.
s73v3r_ 9y ago
"If this is true, it certainly isnt happening again. Google dominates smartphones and could very easily decide to phase out java for go/rust, torpedoing whatever rent-seeking strategy Oracle had originally devised." Because wanting to be paid for one's work is "rent-seeking" now? And no, Google really couldn't. There's a huge library of Android applications that are using Java technologies to make them. Google can't replace Java with go/rust/dart without throwing all that away. They would have to continue to provide support, which would continue to put them in violation.

shmerl 9y ago

> There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform Someone should appeal and bust their case that claims that APIs are copyrightable. And don't forget those who supported this crookedness - Microsoft.

devit 9y ago

Is this going to the Supreme Court or is this the final decision?

lmm 9y ago
It's been sent back to the lower court to determine damages. After that Google can appeal to the Supreme Court if they can find some grounds on which to do so, and then the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear it or not.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  If I recall correctly, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the API copyright question until Google had lost on fair use. Well, Google has now lost on fair use. The Supreme Court may be willing to take the case now (that is, before going back to the lower court to determine damages).

JepZ 9y ago

OT: Thinking about API copyright I wonder how that is supposed to work in other programming languages e.g. Golang. Lets assume Google owns the copyright of the 'io.Writer' interface for the moment. Is everybody who has implemented a struct with a Writer method which satisfies the 'io.Writer' interface and as oracle stated it 'who wants to use them for a competing platform or to embed them in an electronic device' now (hypothetical) at risk of being prosecuted because they infringe Googles copyright? --- I am well aware that Google was the respondent in the Oracle vs. Google case.

IAmEveryone 9y ago
Short answer: no The law doesn't work as a set of naive rules like "If API->You need a license" because human life is full of nuances that can never be fully captured in a set of rigid rules. I know that people are uncomfortable with this truth, because our systems of courts often appears to the casual observer as just a bunch of "elders" making subjective decisions. Hence "smart contracts" etc. And while the criticism isn't completely wrong, the system as it exists in the US today is actually working quite well, with the professional ethos and rules of the court system being somewhat successful at overriding any individual judge's predilections. Anyway, in your case the difference is obviously one of scope. Even in the original ruling that affirmed APIs to be subject to copyright, the judge ultimately dismissed the case because they considered Google's actions to fall under "fair use". While this was now struck down on appeal, it is absolutely certain that copying a single method's signature would still be protected as fair use. Moreover, in the case you mention, a method such as File.write() would probably not fall under any copyright because there isn't much of any creativity involved.
- JepZ 9y ago
  While I understand your point, your argument has very little foundation. You are basically saying: "Everything works very well and if a judge decides something you should respect that, as he has good reason to judge it his way". One thing I have a particular problem with is that even judges from the same country seem to come to different results on the same case. I know its not unusual but that underlines my point that just because some judge came to some verdict, it isn't necessarily true. And if 'the system as it exists in the US today is actually working quite well', why does a company like Google with a lot of smart people will have to pay a fine which probably will be as valuable as the whole Java platform? In a system that actually works well, the smart people would have seen what was going to happen and different judges would come to the same result. And that something as 'simple' as a single method interface doesn't require any creativity is just wrong. I am sure there are a lot of famous creator quotes about that, the first I was able to find is from Steve Jobs: Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. [1] In the case of Golang that would translate to: It is much harder to build a universal single method interface for all kinds of write operations opposed to specific write methods for different use-cases. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445279-simple-can-be-harder-than-complex-you-have-to-work https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/445279-simple-can-be-harder...

shadowmint 9y ago

So what now? An appeal of the appeal? This is the legal drama that never stops giving...

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
There are two next steps. One step is a retrial in the lower court, with fair use no longer a defense. The other is an appeal to the Supreme Court on whether an API can in fact be copyrighted. If the Supreme Court appeal happens, it probably puts the lower court trial on hold. If Google wins the appeal, then (I think) there's no case left to try in the lower court.

chvid 9y ago

I always wondered why Google didn't buy Sun when they had the chance? This (Android's use of Java) has always been a risk for Google. Either in form of the lawsuit but in more general what Oracle (or someone else) would do with Java. Anyways. I hope both companies are smart enough to settle this in a reasonable manner.

pjmlp 9y ago
They thought they could get away with it.

lambda 9y ago

The actual opinion (just posted, had checked a few minutes ago and it wasn't available yet): http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/17-1118.Opinion.3-26-2018.1.PDF http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or...

Finnucane 9y ago

I suppose we could try lobbying Congress to change the copyright law to make an explicit provision for the fair use of software APIs. Hey! Stop laughing!

mrbill 9y ago

What's next? SCO winning an appeal? Sheesh.

danjoc 9y ago

Good. Initially, I thought the API decision was a bad one, but now I think the courts got it right. If you've ever wrestled long with getting a program to compile, you realize it's non-trivial to wrap your brain around complex types. The API is a language and the compiler is a runtime producing output. I can design my API in something like Java and return null from all the methods while I do it. The compiler will still produce expected results when I try to string bits of it together. For most languages, this work is hard, because everything is a runtime error from the compiler. There are elegant and inelegant ways to solve certain problems. The API determines that. It is itself a creative endeavor. Google was given the opportunity to license the API. They still can under GPL, but that means complying with GPL, which they evidently did not want to do. Ruling in favor of fair use here creates a vague double standard. Business models like that of MongoDB, who releases their code under GPL for open source projects and charges a license fee for private projects, would become questionable. "Well, you give it away already, so it's fair use to use it any way we like without paying you!"

macspoofing 9y ago
No. This decision upends decades of computing and programming culture for no discernible benefit to anyone (even Oracle).
pcwalton 9y ago
Would you apply your reasoning to JavaScript, so that Safari and Chrome would be illegal due to failure to obtain a license for the JS APIs? What about Linux? Linux copied the Unix syscall interface. What about Wine?
- strcat 9y ago
  There's the reverse of Wine now too with Microsoft's clean room (non-GPL2 and not currently open source at all) implementation of the Linux kernel kernel <-> userspace ABI.
carussell 9y ago
> They still can under GPL, but that means complying with GPL, which they evidently did not want to do. Not true. Android has been exactly that since 2016. Harmony is dead (killed at the ASF, even), and Android is now using OpenJDK.

reacweb 9y ago

IMHO, Google has stolen a very tiny piece of Java that Google thought to be free (some judges agreed with this opinion). At the time of Sun, $100M was really excessive. I think this case should be the opportunity to fix a very very small punishment so that companies stop these frivolous litigations.

bitL 9y ago

What other law stuff is Oracle going to test now? They already know they can clone AWS/GCE API with no repercussions.

rb808 9y ago

Its really interesting how Microsoft changed their JVM into .net, with a nearly identical library API but so slightly different (often Upper case methods instead of lower case). Would be an interesting idea if Google could compile JVM bytecode apps to run on .net VM. Of course JSV8 engine would be better, but is more difficult.

Leszek 9y ago
Something like https://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/ https://blog.xamarin.com/android-in-c-sharp/ ?
- rb808 9y ago
  Yes looks great. Blog post is 6 years old though, is it still valid?

igtztorrero 9y ago

Does anybody knows if API-REST are copyrighted ? The money they gona make !!

onetimemanytime 9y ago

Non-lawyer: is it over, as in Oracle won and judge must decide only the payment? Wiki says that Federal Circuit is the final for these things (I guess SCOTUS might review it...)

dec0dedab0de 9y ago

I'm conflicted on this. A. I don't like that APIs are copywrite-able. B. I wish Google complied with the GPL anyway. I hate this anti-GPL sentiment that has been going around the last 10 years or so. C. The android play store would probably go through a renaissance if all the apps had to be rewritten. D. I don't trust Google, but I really really really don't like Oracle.

hasahmed 9y ago
Taking sides of definitely a question of the lesser of two evils on this one.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
guelo 9y ago
B. Java is not licensed under the GPL. C. Not going to happen.
- merb 9y ago
  B. Java is not licensed under the GPL. OpenJDK is.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    OpenJDK didn't exist when Google developed Android, so it would have been very hard for them to use it.
    - dec0dedab0de 9y ago
      The first commercial release of android was 2008, the first release of openjdk was 2006. It wouldn't be that hard to start with an openjdk repo, and delete all the files as you added in the davlik code. Release it as GPL, and call it a derivative work. Not that I think they should have to do that just for the sake of implementing the API

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

guelo 9y ago

What is the point of a copyright or patent trial if the biased Federal Circuit can just overturn the jury verdict? It's an straightforward violation of the 7th amendment.

ABCLAW 9y ago

It may be helpful for readers to look at the actual meat and potatoes of the decision itself. I recommend jumping in at Page 27 of the decision so that they can see how the fair use factors were evaluated in this case: http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/17-1118.Opinion.3-26-2018.1.PDF http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-or... Fair use has four factors, lets see how it shook out: 1) Purpose and Character: Google tried to argue that because android is free that it isn't commercial. Bzzt. Nope. You don't need direct monetization to make something commercial. Was it transformative? They verbatim copied shit. Google claimed it was transformative because they used it in smartphones, yo. No. You guys who think patents that slap "but use a computer to do it" onto the end of some existing process are bad? Google's trying to say the same thing per computer form factor. 2) Nature of the Copyrighted Work: Dealt with previously - APIs are copyrightable. Lots of people have an issue with this, but the previous opinions on that point are where you should go for material on that point. 3) Amount and Substantiality: Bad faith usage came out around neutral; wasn't a huge amount copied but it was important material, as admitted by Google themselves. 4) Effect on Work's Value: Direct evidence of market harm demonstrated by showing that Amazon leveraged Google's infringement to lower their license payment. Slam dunk. Overall, I agree with the other posters indicating that once API copyrights were upheld that this was going to be a clear loser for Google. Maybe they'll get cert and have the supreme court take a look at this following the re-trial.

dmix 9y ago
What exactly was 'copied' by Google? Was it actual code directly copied or just the general design / APIs that were mirrored by their Android Java playform?
- moomin 9y ago
  The Java API definition.
  - suyash 9y ago
    Google stole Java and it's time for them to Pay up BIG MONEY!

endangered 9y ago

How about we stop using Java. It's a terrible language anyways.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
For programming phones, what language do you like better?
- cbhl 9y ago
  JavaScript! /s
- leadingthenet 9y ago
  Swift is nice.
suyash 9y ago
It's the world's number 1 langauge by many standards.
quantumhobbit 9y ago
I hate the whole api copyright stuff, but part if me is hoping this leads to a decline in popularity of Java. I don’t even hate Java that much I just hate the Java is the only “serious programming language” attitude so common in this industry.

mtberatwork 9y ago

> Part of Google’s defense focused on the idea that Java was developed for desktop computers, while Android was created for phones and other mobile devices. Is this really the best defense? The tag line is "write once, run anywhere" after all. I remember back in my CS days (mid/late 90s) when Java was first being pushed at my uni, the overly-enthusiastic vibe even back then was that Java would eventually be found everywhere, even in mundane devices like toasters and coffee machines.

icebraining 9y ago
True, but the version of Java for phones was J2ME, which was different from J2SE. Android implemented the API of the latter.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Sun was in the process of using J2SE, based on the assets they bought from SavaJE, which incidentally had an architecture quite similar to the first Android versions.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Was the TCK changed to allow for that?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      No idea.

TuringNYC 9y ago

Perhaps this is a naive question - but amongst the hundreds of of things Google has invented or has patents on, isn't there something they can find that Oracle has trampled on, and then use it as a negotiation tactic for making this all go away? e.g., If an API can be copyrighted, can a container registry interface also be copyrighted? I agree, this is all stupid, but i'm asking this from the perspective of just finding examples to allow all parties to back off.

carussell 9y ago
Settling out of court at this point would not be a good result, since the most important thing that will come out of this is the legal precedent.

stephen 9y ago

I agree it seems that way, but IMO JavaScript/v8 only exists (or is only the defacto client-side runtime) because Sun/Oracle messed up the Java/JVM trajectory at least twice. 1) was Sun making applets suck so bad, e.g. the JVM itself was too slow pre-JIT, classloading over the wire sucked, DOM interaction was hard (AFAIU/IIRC), etc. I don't think any of these problems were fundamental to "put a VM in the browser", as conceptually Java & JS VMs aren't that different: the trade-offs JS/Brendan picked just worked better. 2) was Oracle being so lawsuit happy, as I think Dart could have been "just a faster/better browser-based JVM" (basically applets done right/with a great pre-JIT JVM) and not the combined "new language + new VM + new ecosystem", had Google felt comfortable using the Java language. It would have made a ton of sense, to reuse all their existing/internal Java tooling/knowledge/etc. But not with Oracle already breathing down their neck re Android. Anyway, agreed it doesn't seem that way, but I think v8's success is actually more related to Sun/Oracle/Java's mistakes/missed opportunities than is initially apparent. Not complaining, as we're in a great place now with v8/TypeScript/React Native being basically "the VM + type-safe language + framework that Java could have been", but with legitimately awesome features e.g. TS's type system, RN hot loading, etc.

mjw1007 9y ago

The question of API copyrightability seems to have been a big failure of the legislation-and-precedent system. The theory is that instead of the legislature trying to think through all the corner cases ahead of time, they pass a somewhat vaguer act and leave the courts to sort out some test cases; then in a reasonable amount of time clarity is supposed to emerge. But it's been 40 years since the world decided that it would "protect" computer programs as if they were literary works, and 30 years since most people thought that the question of API copyrightability was settled, and it turns out that we never got clarity at all. Having judges trying to determine the question by deciding whether APIs are analogous to chapter titles or plot points in Harry Potter books is just ridiculous.

tapirl 9y ago

If Google gives up Java for Android now, Java will drop out of top-5 languages in 5 years.

DannyBee 9y ago

Federal circuit decides to not properly apply ninth circuit law again, news at 11.

thisacctforreal 9y ago

Will this have any reprocussions for AWS drop-in replacements?

AaronFriel 9y ago

Can IBM enforce API copyright against BIOS vendors under this doctrine? Does this revive the SCO linux case? Who owns the copyright for POSIX/UNIX system APIs? What about cloud provider compatibility shims, e.g.: S3 reimplementations or Localstack? I am left with nothing but more questions about the broadness of this decision.

oldandtired 9y ago

The problem for ORACLE is that if they win, they will have a Pyrrhic victory. The old adage of "Be careful what you wish for, you may actually get it" applies here. Greed has consequences and greed will be the undoing.

cabaalis 9y ago

So, for those like me who don't quite understand all the legalese: I've been operating under the belief that APIs and protocol "structures" were ruled as "non-copyright-able" before, while "implementations" absolutely were copyright-able. Was I wrong then, or am I wrong now?

brann0 9y ago
Same situation here. What changed since last trial? Wasn't Oracle demand based on software patents? I'm confused...
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
They were considered non-copyrightable before. Then, in a surprise to many, they were ruled copyrightable in this case. So far, the ruling only applies in the Federal Circuit. And you only get into the Federal Circuit when there is a patent aspect to the case. But a forum-shopping litigant could have a patent claim to the case, drop it part way through, and still wind up in the Federal Circuit on appeal (which, if I understand correctly, is exactly what happened in this case).

jrpelkonen 9y ago

I am not a lawyer, but I wonder if Google could counter sue Oracle on the basis that that Java now implements some methods originally introduced in Google Guava?

larryfreeman 9y ago

This is a big shame. If only Google had purchased Sun Microsystems all this wouldn't have happened. Sun was fine with what Google was doing. When Oracle purchased Sun, it gained the rights to Sun's intellectual property and decided that it had a case against Google. http://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-ceo-explicitly-endorsed-javas-use-in-android-what-do-you-say-now-oracle/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/sun-ceo-explicitly-endorsed-jav...

gaius 9y ago

I propose a compromise: fine Google billions of dollars, but it goes to the taxman, not Oracle

jbritton 9y ago

I just hope we don't get to the place where basic function names are copyrighted, like add, insert, delete, remove, push, pop, sort, map, filter, foldl, foldr. I hope library writers don't have to pull out a thesaurus.

hennsen 9y ago

I admit i don’t understand the details of that case fully and have no time to waste to change that... What i can say: To me it seems like oracle only bought Sun to squeeze out money from it’s “intellectual property” as hard as possible, giving a shit for all the(not fully finished) work Sun did in the years before to make Java a good Open Source citizen that could easily delivered in Linux distributions. The very first thing oracle did was making that harder again and limiting access to the compatibility test suite. Oracle is a greedy company that doesn’t care about anything than making more money, no matter what it costs and no respect to any otger party in no way. They give not the slightest F about being a good OpenSource citizen, in no area where they enter that ecosystem. And their products might have some nice features sometimes but in the end are hard to handle/install/maintain expensive crap. I didn’t write a 100 lines of Java since they own it, and i try to avoid it wherever i can find a viable alternative.

grellas 9y ago

Appellate courts do not lightly overturn jury verdicts using highly fact-specific reviews of evidence. There is a reason they call a jury a "trier of fact". There is a reason for this: if it were the rule that an appellate court could easily step in and second-guess how a jury weighs evidence, there would be little room for finality with jury verdicts because lawyers are very skilled (and become very tiresome) endlessly arguing why this or that fact is better than another and why a court should weigh things differently than the way a jury did. In this case, the Federal Circuit Court did what amounted a wholesale second-guessing of what the jury concluded about the facts here. I am not saying the issues were not complex and that it had absolutely no basis for coming to different conclusions. But the zeal with which this particular court upholds IP absolutism is truly a marvel. This is the court that gave us the frivolous patent bonanza dating back to 1990s by which "everything under the sun" became patentable and many suffered for years from the consequent harm. So too with the way it is handling copyright law in this Oracle/Google dispute. Yes, by all means, let us protect the hell out of APIs and invite endless future litigation that ensures that easy connectivity in the computer world will no longer depend on engineers but on lawyers. And let us say that "no reasonable jury" could possibly conclude that copying even a tiny amount of code could possibly be "quantitatively insignificant" so as to shield the one doing the copying from claims of copyright infringement, all the better to ensure that future lawyers can conjure up infringement claims from all sorts of seemingly quantitatively trivial copying. I deliberately exaggerate in how I characterize this decision knowing that it glosses over all sorts of fine points that are the subject of profound argument among lawyers. But I do so to capture the spirit of this decision and what decisions like this mean for computing generally. Yes, a very broad theory of what is patentable can readily be defended in the name of protecting IP rights and lawyers can come up with endless arguments for why this should be so. So too can lawyers make convincing arguments for very broad theories of copyrightability and very narrow readings of fair use. In both cases, the law protecting IP gets an expansive reading. Well, speaking as one who has tilled this soil for a long time and who very much supports and sees the need for strong support of IP rights, I can only say that the Federal Circuit Court has proven to be a largely counter-productive force in serving as a specialized court dealing with IP among federal courts. This ruling will do what its prior expansive reading of patent law did: it will set up a legal standard that invites lawyers and litigants to engage in endless second-guessing over copyright and fair use in areas of connectivity and inter-operability in the computing world and this in turn, as a standing invitation to litigate, cannot be good for future development.

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romanovcode 9y ago

I bet google wishes now they'd picked .NET for Android.

bitmapbrother 9y ago
Why would Google want to use a language that is encumbered with patent promises and made by a company that has a history of shaking down Android OEM's?

fauigerzigerk 9y ago

So does IBM now have an enforceable copyright on SQL that Oracle infringed upon?

pjmlp 9y ago
People keep bringing SQL up, yet don't realize that SQL is an international standard which one needs to pay ISO for, and also to pay for certifications. Oracle has payed for SQL. Google has not payed for Java.
- fauigerzigerk 9y ago
  The first SQL ISO standard is from 1987. Oracle's first commercial SQL DBMS came out eight years earlier in 1979. In 1987, Oracle was already the largest database vendor and IBM's database business never recovered from that setback. That said, I don't know if Oracle had some sort of licensing agreement with IBM during those early years. The question is what any such agreement would have looked like in light of the recent legal opinions on copyright.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Contrary to FOSS myths, SQL ISO standards aren't free and don't write by themselves, Oracle had a seat at the table just like everyone else that matters on the RDMS space. IBM is doing pretty fine with DB 2 and Informix.

sroussey 9y ago

I wonder if the meaning of this ruling will leak to other areas. For example, is “boilerplate” in contracts and other legal documents copyrightable? Who owns them? The lawyers, the law firms, the clients? Will attorneys pay other attorneys to use the same phrases and paragraphs?

andybak 9y ago

I just read the sub-thread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691774 onwards and started nodding in agreement at the fine arguments therein. But then sanity hit me in the face like a damp glacier and I remembered the 9 lines of code in question. Please anyone who's ever programmed anything; take a step back and tell me this is sane. Tell me there's not a billion cases like this out there waiting for a lawyer to unearth them. However persuasive the step by step logic seems, it's the same step by step that paves the road to hell. If logic, reason and law bring us to this point then it's logic, reason and law that need to be carefully reexamined.

ggm 9y ago
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there are a rough Fermi-number million or more, of this kind of event, and this decision, which most people in the practice of writing software would consider a massive reversal, quite aside from being a retrograde step, implies that both sides of the deal are now in some sense duty-bound to investigate. You could be the unwitting, unintending offendor by trivial API copying, entirely normal in your prior working experiences. You could now be the person who has to inform senior staff that due to this decision, code your company owns as IPR is the subject of this kind of copying. Think about it: If you discovered that any activity you did was now potentially valuable in a lawsuit to generate income, by what right do you not inform senior staff? What you feel about the lawsuit is distinct from your obligation as a company officer, regarding its status surely?

kraig911 9y ago

I've read all the ideas around why or why not Google is liable or Oracle is being frivolous... Can an "Expert" tell me what would happen to Google(and Android by Association) if Oracle won full out? Besides the paying out of billion(s).

ebcode 9y ago

It is time. #deleteoracle

hjklasdf 9y ago
Or we should blacklist any former Oracle employee whose tenure covers 2018. Who are these people who are staying? What does it say about their values?

nojvek 9y ago

With Oracle slapping patent infringements left and right for Java APIs, I predict in the next decade JAVA will sort of become irrelevant. I hope more universities are taking note of this and not teaching JAVA to first year students. I also hope Oracle burns to ground in a decade.

didibus 9y ago

What if this ends up true. Can Google just prefix all namespaces with google. ? So now the API names are all changed. Basically, if API are copyrightable, whats the minimal change to not consider it a copy? com.oracle.String/lowerCase Could this become com.google.String/lowerCase So now the name is changed? Or does this all now becomes a case of any similarity can be sued and on a case by case basis courts will jusge if its too similar or not enough?

todd8 9y ago

I used to keep a couple of 9-track tapes (see [1]) of the code I had written. Too bad I don’t have them anymore, I probably had some 50 year old API I came up with that someone somewhere violated. If that seems absurd, consider how few people were programming back then and how fundamental and basic the APIs were. It’s worse than the patent mess. At least patents expire in 20 years! Copyright for those 1970s APIs will belong to my heirs for 50 years after I die! (see the Mickey Mouse law [2]). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/9_track_tape [2] https://www.google.com/search?q=mickey+mouse+copyright+law&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari https://www.google.com/search?q=mickey+mouse+copyright+law&i...

julienfr112 9y ago

Could Oracle be sued on the usage of SQL with it's products ? Or did they paid something to Ibm to use it ?