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Google did not do a clean-room reimplementation. They copied. This is not disputed by Google.
by hcknwscommenter 9y ago
Google did not do a clean-room reimplementation. They copied. This is not disputed by Google.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoIYO did they copy an artistic work?
- hcknwscommenter 9y agoCopyright covers subjective work, not just "artistic" work. In the same sense that the choice of how to paginate a phone book and where to put the guidewords on each page is copywritable, yes APIs are copyrightable.
- michaelmrose 9y agoThey copied literally a handful of lines of code that an intern could have written in a few hours.
- ben509 9y agoOnce they admit to copying some of it, it throws the whole clean room process into doubt. I think the courts are working on the "where there's smoke there's fire" principle.
- hcknwscommenter 9y agoBut they didn't just write their own APIs. They copied them. Thousands of them.
- cromwellian 9y agoCopying an API is what software developers call "implementing an API" When you create your own USB cable, or electric plug, you aren't copying the API specs, you're implementing them.