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That is simply incorrect. Copyright covers copying. It does not cover independent re-implementation. That is the point of clean-room re-implementation. It i

That is simply incorrect. Copyright covers copying. It does not cover independent re-implementation. That is the point of clean-room re-implementation. It is not copying because--> clean room. Silly Example: you design a phone book containing all the names and phone numbers of everyone in the city. To the extent that any subjective decisions were made in the design, it is a copyrighted work. I design a phone book. If I copy yours, it is a violation of your copyright. If I collate the underlying information and then make my own phone book it is not copying, even if it looks exactly the same.

protomyth 9y ago
No, you are not getting the point of the whole "copyright the API" thing this discussion is talking about. If I can copyright the API then it doesn't matter if you clean room or not since the API is copyright and I can sue the heck out of you no matter how you did your work. That is my point that you are missing. IBM didn't believe they could copyright the API so they took some additional measures. If they thought the API was copyrightable then Compaq would have gotten sued out of existence. This is what makes Oracle's assertion so scary for the computer industry.
- treis 9y ago
  Actually, you're not getting it. Copyright means I can't copy your work. If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright. If I take your picture of a building and copy that's a copyright violation. If I take a picture of a building from the exact same angle you did, that's not a copyright violation.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    > If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright. That's not how it works for copyright. Beyond that, how do you independently arrive at an API that you are trying to have an exact copy of? Photography is not programming. I cannot run a bunch of words through a program until it prints out some book I want and then say I arrived at it independently. You honestly need to read the copyright laws as you are missing some information. [edit: the original premise of all this thread is IBM didn't try to copyright the BIOS API]
    - treis 9y ago
      I suppose you could argue that black box reproduction is simply an elaborate form of copying. That's not relevant to this case because Google did simply just copy it.
      - protomyth 9y ago
        Then why did you bring it up? My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable and then made an attempt at protecting it a different way. Oracle believes they can copyright an API and almost everything in the industry was built with the belief that you cannot copyright an API.
        hcknwscommenter 9y ago
        >My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-computers-skirted-ibms-patents-and-gave-rise-to-eisa/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp... Relevant portion "But one problem remained with their IBM-compatible machine. How would they recreate the IBM BIOS without breaching the copyright? Why did they need a compatible BIOS (basic input output system)? . . . Some companies, such as Eagle, copied the BIOS either by reading the IBM manual to understand which interrupt codes did what or by simply copying the hard-coded ROM chip that holds the BIOS. This breached the copyright that IBM had over the BIOS and so did not take IBM long to prevent such companies from selling more of those machines. However, there is a way to bypass these types of copyrights with the use of a “clean room”."
        protomyth 9y ago
        Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form. No, no, no, that is not what I said. I was talking about the API of the BIOS. The BIOS source code is, of course, copyrightable. That is why IBM was able to make it very hard for people to copy it until folks did a proper clean room. Why would I go into detail about the counter measure if it was not copyrightable? That makes no sense.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    That's true, but if you type and distribute a book that happens to match the latest Harry Potter, nobody - including the courts - will believe you independently came up with that exact sequence of words. Similarly, if you copy the definitions of all functions/methods/classes/etc from one API, nobody will believe you independently came up with it.
    - chii 9y ago
      Even if the methods and functions are so basic as to not have variations?
      - icebraining 9y ago
        It's hard to tell about APIs, since there's no caselaw, but the rule for texts is that the smaller they are, the more original they have to be to qualify for copyright protection - so conversely, the sheer length of a work makes it more likely to be protected even if it's not that original. So "add(a, b) returning the sum of the two" is probably not copyrightable by itself, but a whole namespace full of functions might be.
      - lmm 9y ago
        No. But the court explicitly looked at that and said that there was enough creativity in the choice of what names to give methods and how to group methods that the Java API qualifies as a creative work (and I don't think anyone would really dispute that).

protomyth 9y ago

No, you are not getting the point of the whole "copyright the API" thing this discussion is talking about. If I can copyright the API then it doesn't matter if you clean room or not since the API is copyright and I can sue the heck out of you no matter how you did your work. That is my point that you are missing. IBM didn't believe they could copyright the API so they took some additional measures. If they thought the API was copyrightable then Compaq would have gotten sued out of existence. This is what makes Oracle's assertion so scary for the computer industry.

treis 9y ago
Actually, you're not getting it. Copyright means I can't copy your work. If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright. If I take your picture of a building and copy that's a copyright violation. If I take a picture of a building from the exact same angle you did, that's not a copyright violation.
- protomyth 9y ago
  > If I arrive independently at the same thing, then I didn't copy your work and therefore didn't violate your copyright. That's not how it works for copyright. Beyond that, how do you independently arrive at an API that you are trying to have an exact copy of? Photography is not programming. I cannot run a bunch of words through a program until it prints out some book I want and then say I arrived at it independently. You honestly need to read the copyright laws as you are missing some information. [edit: the original premise of all this thread is IBM didn't try to copyright the BIOS API]
  - treis 9y ago
    I suppose you could argue that black box reproduction is simply an elaborate form of copying. That's not relevant to this case because Google did simply just copy it.
    - protomyth 9y ago
      Then why did you bring it up? My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable and then made an attempt at protecting it a different way. Oracle believes they can copyright an API and almost everything in the industry was built with the belief that you cannot copyright an API.
      - hcknwscommenter 9y ago
        >My original post was about a situation where the creator of an API didn't believe it to be copyrightable Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form. https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-computers-skirted-ibms-patents-and-gave-rise-to-eisa/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/how-compaqs-clone-comp... Relevant portion "But one problem remained with their IBM-compatible machine. How would they recreate the IBM BIOS without breaching the copyright? Why did they need a compatible BIOS (basic input output system)? . . . Some companies, such as Eagle, copied the BIOS either by reading the IBM manual to understand which interrupt codes did what or by simply copying the hard-coded ROM chip that holds the BIOS. This breached the copyright that IBM had over the BIOS and so did not take IBM long to prevent such companies from selling more of those machines. However, there is a way to bypass these types of copyrights with the use of a “clean room”."
        protomyth 9y ago
        Your original post was about IBM not being able to copyright the PC Bios. Which is simply not true in any way shape or form. No, no, no, that is not what I said. I was talking about the API of the BIOS. The BIOS source code is, of course, copyrightable. That is why IBM was able to make it very hard for people to copy it until folks did a proper clean room. Why would I go into detail about the counter measure if it was not copyrightable? That makes no sense.
- icebraining 9y ago
  That's true, but if you type and distribute a book that happens to match the latest Harry Potter, nobody - including the courts - will believe you independently came up with that exact sequence of words. Similarly, if you copy the definitions of all functions/methods/classes/etc from one API, nobody will believe you independently came up with it.
  - chii 9y ago
    Even if the methods and functions are so basic as to not have variations?
    - icebraining 9y ago
      It's hard to tell about APIs, since there's no caselaw, but the rule for texts is that the smaller they are, the more original they have to be to qualify for copyright protection - so conversely, the sheer length of a work makes it more likely to be protected even if it's not that original. So "add(a, b) returning the sum of the two" is probably not copyrightable by itself, but a whole namespace full of functions might be.
    - lmm 9y ago
      No. But the court explicitly looked at that and said that there was enough creativity in the choice of what names to give methods and how to group methods that the Java API qualifies as a creative work (and I don't think anyone would really dispute that).