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It's a Table of Contents at best. There's nothing "original" about System.out or StringBuilder.append. The only reason this case has seen success is because the
by jhall1468 8y ago
It's a Table of Contents at best. There's nothing "original" about System.out or StringBuilder.append. The only reason this case has seen success is because the appeals court ruled that an API is akin to a taxonomy and that a taxonomy is copyrightable. The problem I have with that is that facts aren't copyrightable.
You can append to a string. You can prepend to a string. You can reverse a string. And that's all API's are. There definitions of things you can do to a given structure. If the API was "Shazam.PowerBuilder.AwesomeThing()" I'd understand this position. But it wasn't. It was obvious lists of "facts" about given structures.
- treis 8y ago>You can append to a string. You can prepend to a string. You can reverse a string. And that's all API's are. There definitions of things you can do to a given structure. If the API was "Shazam.PowerBuilder.AwesomeThing()" I'd understand this position. But it wasn't. It was obvious lists of "facts" about given structures. But in Java I can't add to a string. I can't prefix a string. Nor can I invert a string. So the things you mention aren't mere definitions or facts about things you can do to a string. They're methods specifically chosen by the language designer to be useful and those choices are a big part of what makes Java different from Ruby, for example.
- empthought 8y agoBut structured compilations of facts (taxonomies) are copyrightable. You can’t just expect cases to go as if the black letter law and case law were written as you wish they were. The courts apply the law as it has been written and interpreted previously.