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Supreme Court to Hear Google-Oracle Copyright Fight

522 points by nwrk 7y ago

jfasi 7y ago
I hate to say it, but I’m not optimistic about Google’s case here. From a purely technical point of view, APIs being free to reuse is an awesome thing that makes for a more vibrant and competitive software ecosystem. At the same time, Oracle’s characterization of their API as “original software” is not entirely off base, as anyone who has spent time and energy creating and API would know. The amount of design and work required to create an elegant and useful API is huge, and while it would irreparably harm software as a field to call it copyrightable, calling it anything other than an “original” work is a weak position. Personally, I’m dreading the outcome of this case.
- thesausageking 7y ago
  Google's argument is that it falls under fair use to do a clean room implementation of the APIs. District Judge Alsup agreed with this legal idea: "So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical."
  - gpm 7y ago
    Google has several arguments, I find most of them persuasive. The fair use one is sort of a fallback. The more immediate argument is that APIs aren't copyrightable material, since there isn't more than one way to write them. You can't write the API differently and still let existing java programs run with your standard library.
    - glofish 7y ago
      They could design their own API and provide an "invisible shim" that transforms the calls to the original API into theirs.
      - gpm 7y ago
        To implement such an "invisible shim" you would still need to write the exact same API that oracle is claiming is copyrighted to let other programs build against it. It's not the internals of the functions that this case is about, it's literally about "class ArrayList { void clear() { [this part excluded from case] } ... }"
        glofish 7y ago
        not exactly. there is a big difference between an API exposed to all other programmers in the world - versus one that is there for say compatibility. Their entire API works the same way as Java system and you program it as Java - it would be very different if say Android was programmed in Go and they had a way to translate Java programs into Go.
        gpm 7y ago
        I assume your first post was in response to my "you can't write the API differently" paragraph. If not we are talking past eachother, sorry. If so, your followup is that focusing on Google's actions is missing the point. If there is only one (or a small number) of ways to write it then it isn't copyrighted, so Google can do literally whatever it wants. If there are many ways to write it, the argument fails, and Google taking a more minimal approach to copying it wouldn't change that (it might change the fair use analysis, but that's a separate discussion). It's more of a nitpick, but your reply also exaggerates the scope of the case. No one is arguing in this case that Google was not free to implement Android or an API in Java, they are arguing about re-implementing Java's standard library APIs. As far as this case goes I don't think there is any salient distinction between implementing android in Go, and implementing android in Java with a different standard library api.
  - tenebrisalietum 7y ago
    The whole PC industry was deeply affected, in a positive manner for consumers, in a negative manner for IBM, by Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM's BIOS ROM API. Imagine if users of BIOS/UEFI API had to pay royalties to IBM (which derived it from CP/M).
    - hollerith 7y ago
      >Imagine if users of BIOS/UEFI API had to pay royalties I always thought that every PC maker did have to pay royalties to Phoenix or one of the other BIOS vendors. I know that open-source BIOSes, e.g., coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS), exist, but I got the impression that even at this late stage in the BIOS game, only a minority of machines ship with them. I always thought that Compaq created its clean-room implementation because IBM outright refused to license their BIOS (to Compaq or anyone else).
      - jpollock 7y ago
        Let's rephrase... Imagine a world where Compaq was unable to create a cleanroom implementation of IBM's BIOS because that involved re-implementing the copyrighted APIs.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - all2 7y ago
        Where I work we have a line item for every computer we make for a BIOS royalty. So this happens at least sometimes.
        monocasa 7y ago
        On the copyright of the actual software by Phoenix or Award or whoever, not an API licensing fee.
      - simcop2387 7y ago
        that's the difference though, theyrr free to make one or use any of the existing ones with the conditions of the authors. they're not forbidden to make their own or use a competitor's like the oracle ruling could otherwise mean.
  - saghm 7y ago
    That was only after the appeals court stuck down Alsup's previous ruling that APIs couldn't be copyrighted and sent the issue back down to him to determine whether it was fair use.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago
  My understanding is that this case has produced emails inside Google about essentially how to avoid licensing Java. In the light of the incredible profit machine Google is, and how large a monopoly Android is, its hard to imagine any judge looking favorably on a plan to avoid paying licensing for something to build a multi-billion dollar industry. That being said, I feel ruling against Oracle would be also very perilous for open software from for profit entities, as it would have a harmful chilling effect on companies trying to dual license or keep their technology open. Arguments Google had made in earlier stages used the GPL-licensed OpenJDK to justify using their non-GPL implementation.
  - lostmsu 7y ago
    It is kinda interesting, that if Oracle wins this, then Google, and specifically Android will effectively become GPL-infringers.
    - alok-g 7y ago
      I believe there's more. Oracle had specific clauses in the licence terms to prevent usage of JVM on mobile. In other words, Google actually releasing Android under GPL is not enough for the case to be finished off.
  - danShumway 7y ago
    I don't get this perspective. The Open Source movement relies on adversarial operability far more than for-profit entities do. Would WINE be legal if Oracle won? Would Oracle's OpenOffice be able to read and save Microsoft document formats? Replicating APIs has always been a huge part of the Open Source movement.
    - gpm 7y ago
      The Wine case is particularly amusing, because WSL (v1) would be equally infringing in the exact opposite direction.
      - deleted 7y ago
- danShumway 7y ago
  We have precedent that game mechanics can't be copyrighted -- they get classified as "inventions" and have to be patented instead. Obviously IANAL, but to me as a game designer, mechanics aren't any less creative work than narrative. In fact, I'm spending more of my creative energy on mechanics than I am on story. So the lines to me just seem incredibly arbitrary, or at least I don't understand the legal differences well enough to figure out intuitively where they lie. I am incredibly grateful that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but game mechanics don't feel like inventions to me. A game mechanic is how I express an idea. I tried to make a prediction about which way this would go, and I genuinely don't know -- not even that my prediction is uncertain, I don't feel like I know enough to even make a prediction at all. It does make me nervous. I think it's important that the Supreme Court hear it, and I'm glad they agreed to, but it would be utterly disastrous if this got decided in Oracle's favor. My (perhaps incorrect) impression is that the Supreme Court is not particularly fond of the 9th, and have something of a history of slapping down attempts at copyright expansion. A ruling against Oracle would be fantastic, and would maybe even open the door for talking about blocking copyright on grounds of compatibility. I guess I'm just nervous because it feels like the stakes are really high. At this point, there's nothing really that people like me can do, right? It's just up to Oracle and Google's lawyers?
  - twright 7y ago
    > At this point, there's nothing really that people like me can do, right? It's just up to Oracle and Google's lawyers? Yes, with regard to this case, there’s nothing we can do at this point. In the longer term, it’s up to law makers on the state and federal level to address shortcomings and expansions of copyright law. So vote! (Or, I guess if you are particularly wealthy, lobby!)
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    You, or an industry group you are part of, could file an amicus brief, but, yeah, there's not a lot.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      You could also try to get your company to file an amicus brief as well.
- monocasa 7y ago
  Taking time and energy doesn't define copyright. There's tons of acts that take time and energy, and don't grant you a century long government backed monopoly on anything almost like it. For instance, recipes, and tables of contents aren't copyrightable. Going into case law, Sony v Bleem made it pretty clear that clean room reimplementations of APIs are on the table. Going into US code, the otherwise crappy DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering for interoperability. ie. interoperability even when the original vendor won't even tell you what the API is. Going into practicalities, who owns SQL? Who owns POSIX? The entire idea that APIs can have copyright is blatantly in contrast to decades of law, and is only happening because the CAFC is going off on it's own and ignoring 9th circuit precedent.
  - tzs 7y ago
    > Taking time and energy doesn't define copyright For those who would like more detail on this, the major case on this in the US is Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) [1]. This is not necessarily the case in other countries. See [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    > Going into case law, Sony v Bleem made it pretty clear that clean room reimplementations of APIs are on the table. Sony sued Bleem because of screenshots. The legality of compatible products such as emulators was not evaluated by the court. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11837224078052556056 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=118372240780525... > The legality of the emulator is not at issue in this lawsuit. > The issue in this appeal is the validity of the method by which Bleem is advertising its product. > In various advertising media, Bleem has included comparative "screen shots" of Sony PlayStation games. > We conclude that it is a fair use for Bleem to advertise comparatively only between what PlayStation games actually look like on a television and what they actually look like on a computer when played with the emulator.
- eqvinox 7y ago
  > From a purely technical point of view, The technical point of view needs to be combined with the legal one here, and — > At the same time, Oracle’s characterization of their API as “original software” is not entirely off base, as anyone who has spent time and energy creating and API would know. The amount of design and work required to create an elegant and useful API is huge, and while it would irreparably harm software as a field to call it copyrightable, calling it anything other than an “original” work is a weak position. just because something takes a lot of work, that doesn't automatically mean it is copyrightable. An API doesn't implement anything, it describes a function. Even if it describes a lot of functions and they mesh together really well, there's a distinction between "what" a program does and "how" a program does something. To compare with literature copyright, there are a ton of romance novels out there — pretty sure you can find a lot of common patterns on "what" story they tell. However, only the "how" is copyrighted, you can't prevent anyone from writing a story with the same outline as an existing one. (For literature, the problem becomes really tricky since the crossing over from "what" to "how" is kinda fluid; e.g. you can't just swap out character names. Software is actually easier there.)
  - marcoseliziario 7y ago
    Exactly. An implementation of an API is copyrightable. Not the API itself. With a lot of goodwill, with some very generous interpretation, an API could be patentable, but copyrightable seems absurd to me.
  - smadurange 7y ago
    I don't think the comparison with literature makes sense. API is what defines a software. For instance, if someone copies Microsoft suite full public interface (including the UI which is part of the interface it would be a problem even if the implementation was different). API signature is the UI equivalent for a library/programming interface software. So, I agree with the original commentors concerns here. Oracle's got a point too.
    - eqvinox 7y ago
      > API signature is the UI equivalent for a library/programming interface software. It isn't. "A main window with toolbars and an edit area." is the equivalent of the API signature. The layout, icons, ordering, etc. is artistic work of the "how" and copyrightable. (FWIW by your logic, LibreOffice would be violating Microsoft's copyright already and we could only ever have one office suite in the world.)
- abledon 7y ago
  Wasn't there some judge a couple years back who , in order to understand a case properly, taught himself java ?
  - gumby 7y ago
    The very same judge, Alsup, whose ruling was overturned, hence this Hail Mary/saving throw to the Supreme Court.
  - elygre 7y ago
    I wonder how he deals with medical malpractice cases.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  If you read the amici briefs, some of the people who actually wrote that API are explicitly disagreeing with Oracle's position.
  - bondolo 7y ago
    This would seem to call in to question their being "friends of the court" rather than associated with a particular litigant, especially in the cases where they chose to also work for Google and likely have an a interest in the outcome of this specific case. As opposed to legitimate amici who are generally more concerned with the precedent.
    - zucker42 7y ago
      If you're talking about the 78 programmer amici brief, only 12 have any connection at all to Google (only 5 are employees), and each of those are affected personally, beyond association with Google. This is addressed directly in the brief. Also when the commenter said "wrote the API", he was referring to the Oracle/Sun Java API, not the Google Android API.
- wyldfire 7y ago
  > From a purely technical point of view, APIs being free to reuse is an awesome thing that makes for a more vibrant and competitive software ecosystem This is not merely a technical benefit, it's a practical one and represents the status quo. The fact that there's no precedent isn't because it's new, it's because no one ever thought it was infringing before.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    Nobody might believe that such a thing is infringing but there are plenty of people who are mad that a competitor just copies and pastes their API. Smartcar was such a case that made it to HN. I really do think the determination for this case ought to be if you copy an API to facilitate interaction with existing software then you should be in the clear. If you do the same because it’s easier than coming up with your own then I think it should be infringement.
- zmmmmm 7y ago
  I don't think it's actually about that. APIs are facts, and facts are not copyrightable. How is an API a fact? You have a system, in the real world. It is a "thing". There are facts about this thing: if you send it particular bytes, it does X, if you send other bytes, it does Y. The fact that it does this is empirically derived. There are not two or more options for it, it's like gravity or electromagnetism. APIs are facts about the systems they apply to, so while there is creativity in designing them, there is no creativity in building a system that interacts with them. There is exactly one way derived from the empirical fact of how it works. Where the case IS weak is that there IS creativity in how you document and organise the API. And I'm pretty sure Google's re-implementation was very similarly organised to the real Java. That will be the crack Oracle will be trying to exploit here. But its not actually about the original work being "original" or even "creative".
- jrochkind1 7y ago
  In general, the amount of time/energy/cost invested in something is not a prime indicator of whether it is copyrightable, under the law. This is a misconception. Facts are not copyrightable no matter how much time/energy/cost went into compiling them, and this is clearly established law. Google's case is that an API specification or implementation is more like a set of facts. Which as a software engineer, seems pretty plausible to me, they do seem like a set of facts, a description of fact about how software works. On the other hand, unlike facts, they were not purely observed, but were indeed invented by humans -- but recipes aren't copyrightable either, even though they are not observed but invented too. Neither are the rules of a game. These are all considered more like 'facts' than creative works. Doesn't matter if eg you spent years and millions of dollars researching food chemistry to make your recipe. I don't think its entirely clear who will win, but I don't think Google's case is as weak as you think, although i agree that Oracle's contention isn't entirely off base. . In particular, in general, how much time and energy went into making something is not generally one of the most significant factors in determining copyright or fair use. (Additionally, the well-established law around reverse engineering and creating clones -- that it is allowed -- is in Google's favor, as that analogy seems pretty strong too). Copyright law is -- has always been, or at least for 100 years -- about a bunch of competing factors balanced against each other. And when it comes to technology advances, has always relied on analogies to previous technologies and industries, and who has the most persuasive analogy. And then we have the fact that the people deciding what analogy applies best may not entirely understand the technology as a social fact...
- bborud 7y ago
  I don't agree with your argument. I agree that designing good APIs requires a great deal of work, but Sun/Oracle were not alone in doing this work. In fact, they had considerable help from community, competitors and customers. Java APIs are to a great degree a collaborative effort and it isn't right that Oracle should be the sole benefactor of this uncompensated work that has only made their product more valuable. If this is true for these particular APIs isn't very relevant in my view. What is relevant is that the Java platform as a whole has gained much from its community. Without the Java platform the APIs would hardly have any relevance at all.
  - alok-g 7y ago
    What you are questioning then is not that whether APIs should be copyrightable or not, but rather whether Oracle solely should have a copyright over the Java APIs.
    - bborud 7y ago
      I am saying that if they want to claim ownership of something they can’t pretend the Java community didn’t contribute significantly to the development of the Java APIs. If you are asking for my opinion: extorting those who use your API is always a poor long term business decision because it proves ill faith and undermines trust. Oracle already has a problem with corporations making a conscious effort to move away from their database platforms.
- burtonator 7y ago
  If Oracle wins the Open Source community should adopt a new license to punitively punish companies like Oracle who abuse this system. We can adapt our license to allow anyone to use the API except if they're using API licensing themselves, at which point they would be in violation.
- drallison 7y ago
  The possibility that Oracle might prevail keeps me awake some nights. Oracle's "original software" is not. It is derivative of other work, for example, Smalltalk and its libraries. The idea of including explicit interface declarations with each module was, I think, introduced by the programming language SUE designed by Rick Holt. Copyright does not protect ideas; copyright can only protect the expression. And when the two are intrinsically combined, there cannot be copyright.
m463 7y ago
I think APIs open for interoperability is better for society. As an example, the Z80 and the 8080 were interoperable and it was better for everyone.
- meddlepal 7y ago
  What's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution which is what the SCOTUS will judge this on.
  - gpm 7y ago
    Constitution? It seems much more likely that this will be decided on statutory grounds than constitutional ones.
  - kerpele 7y ago
    It's kind of interesting that a piece of legislation written hundreds of years ago will be used to decide something like this.
  - magicalist 7y ago
    > What's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution which is what the SCOTUS will judge this on. The Constitution only says > The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. most of copyright is defined in statute (the various copyright acts) and court precedent.
    - wtallis 7y ago
      Yeah, the Copyright Clause is pretty unusual. More than literally anything else in the Constitution, copyrights and patents actually are supposed to be judged in light of what's better for society. Most stuff in the Constitution gives the government the power to do X (sometimes stating explicitly that it's for reason Y). The structure of the copyright clause is that Congress has the power to do Y, using mechanism X — a strict reading of that means that the government cannot do X for reasons other than Y, and cannot pursue Y using means other than X, and definitely shouldn't do X for reasons of not-Y.
vessenes 7y ago
I'd say almost every software engineer should be rooting for Google here. The implications of being able to claim copyright infringement on anyone implementing an Application Programming Interface are staggering - it would impact every open source project that tried to interoperate with any company's services, for instance. The world is not going to be better for extending the protections Oracle wants here. Alsup's ruling is sane, shows his clear understanding of coding and the history of Java and how it was licensed out to the world under Sun, and is really very simple to understand: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522459 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522... The appeals court fucked this up, hard. I would like to think Alsup's ruling will be upheld -- groklaw has fantastic quotes from him during the trial. At one point, he himself notes he had coded from the spec some of the functions Oracle complained about and disagreed with Oracle counsel statements. Refreshing from our judicial branch, to say the least.
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  Issue exists with instruction sets as well. If Oracle wins everyone who has written a compiler for an instruction set they did not have explicit permission to write one for is in violation.
  - gpm 7y ago
    There's probably a better case for compilers being fair use than this (not that this doesn't have a great case). I'd be more concerned about emulators and actual chips. People have been assuming that copyright doesn't apply to APIs for so long that I'm sure there's any number of cases of accidental "copyright infringement as defined by Oracle". I'm just not sure that compilers are a prime example (at least as relating to instruction sets).
    - bcrosby95 7y ago
      "Probably". Hah. That just shows the ramifications of Oracle winning this case are fucking insane. We've been operating as if this stuff isn't copyrightable for the last 50 years. You may as well burn the whole industry to the ground if they have their way.
causality0 7y ago
Does Oracle actually do anything useful? Their primary function seems to be to vampirically suck the life out of other technology companies.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Good. In my view, the existing ruling desperately needs to be overturned. And I'm cautiously optimistic. The Supreme Court has shown itself to be far more sane on IP than the Federal Circuit.
- NotMelNoGuitars 7y ago
  If you don't mind expanding, interested to hear why you believe the current ruling should be overturned.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    The current holding that APIs are copyrightable, and reimplementing them for interoperability is not fair use. This is in direct contrast to decades of consensus that APIs are not copyrightable, and furthermore, there is a particular procedure to go through [clean room technique, which Google did] to ensure that the API is reimplemented without infringing any copyright. Letting this ruling stand would mean that nearly every piece of software you use infringed someone's copyright.
    - NotMelNoGuitars 7y ago
      Ah, gotcha - so the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit* decided in favor of Oracle in this case. Thanks for taking the time to type that out, I've been living under a bit of a rock it seems! *corrected from "second district court"
      - monocasa 7y ago
        The CAFC, not the second district.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    Pretty much what jcranmer said: The status quo, for decades, has been that you can do that. So this would be a drastic change to the rules by which we play the game. More: Recall that copyright lasts close to forever. (95 years for corporations, if I recall correctly.) This ruling, then, would have allowed IBM to sue every BIOS clone maker, and keep a stranglehold on the PC market, and still have that stranglehold to this day, and be able to keep it until 2076. Then, on August 2, 2076, then we could get IBM-compatible PCs. Compare that to actual history, and you can see why I think the current ruling is horrible.
anon1m0us 7y ago
It is property law and the ability to protect one's rights to property that has granted the creators of property a return on their investment of resources into property. If creators of property cannot protect their property, there will be less return on that property and thus, less incentive to create it. Oracle bought Sun, and with that purchase, the ownership of intellectual property in the form of the Java API. Google then proceeded to copy that property into their own property without abiding by the usage restrictions Oracle, the property owner, specified. That was theft of Oracle's property. If the Supreme Court does not uphold protections of property, I believe, we will see less investment in such property. I am not sure if that is good or bad for the future of the world, but I do believe had Sun not had property rights to Java, they wouldn't have created it.
- pvelagal 7y ago
  How about similarities of C++ and Java ? Who copies whom ? int, float, char key words ? if - then - else, while loop, for loop, curly braces { } comments // and /* main() method ? socket API : socket, connect, listen, accept ? and So many keywords similar to C++ ? (break, continue, char, double, new, public, private, return, static etc.) Java benefitted from Collective knowledge of Computer Science and design patterns that were invented outside of Sun microsystems. The JVM is written in C++ ? Can we cay JVM APIs are wrappers around C++ API ? Do they pay Bjarne Stroustrop ?
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  What property has Google destroyed that Oracle is trying to protect? Owning a property doesn’t give you the right to sue other people who develop a property that offers the same services.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    No one said they destroyed it. Google appropriated Oracle's intellectual property for Google's own use, specifically because Google didn't want to pay for the use of that intellectual property. If I write a book and you read it, love it, and then retype the book, print it and sell it, you have violated my property rights. You and many others here don't want it to be that way, but it is exactly that way.
deleted 7y ago
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gojomo 7y ago
~grellas's comment on sibling story that didn't win the upvote-to-front-page tournament: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334
shadowgovt 7y ago
I'd pretend I don't have an opinion on this topic, but I appear to be wearing my "YOU WOULDN'T REIMPLEMENT AN API" t-shirt in the MPAA scare-commercial font.
tehjoker 7y ago
This case clearly shows how taking something from the public and making is private is essentially a greedy and harmful activity. Unfortunately, our economy is based on this idea.... it doesn't have to be though.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  They didn't take it from the public any more than Led Zeppelin took their songs from the public when they sued those who violated their IP rights. Software has a real and tangible value. Songs ... well, you decide their value, but I don't understand why the value songs create should be protectable, but software not. That's really what this is about. This is about granting to those who write software the same rights to that property as anyone else who has rights to what they write.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    Lol, what? You still have copyright over software you write regardless of how this case goes. It's whether you can shut down other people's works just for being compatible with yours that's at stake.
    - anon1m0us 7y ago
      "Just for being compatible" is disingenuous at best. Ask yourself, "Why did they copy the Java API? Why didn't they use Python or Go or Dart?" They invented Dart after all.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        Golang and Dart didn't exist at the time. And Google knows all too well how large Python projects break down, that's why they made Golang.
  - tehjoker 7y ago
    We make things protectable so that private entities can cordon them off from the public so that they can make money from them by selling copies. If we had a different funding arrangement for the arts, such things would certainly be unnecessary. In this case, we can clearly see that privatizing APIs gains the public nothing and Oracle and co. lots of things.
crazygringo 7y ago
It's ridiculous this is being decided by the courts instead of legislatively. Fair use doctrine was obviously never intended to apply to reimplementing API's either way because it didn't exist yet. Rather than have a court make up some kind of ultimately arbitrary precedent ruling either way, Congress should be debating the ramifications of whether reimplementing API's is explicitly fair use or not, considering both pros and cons to the economy, with opportunity for all tech companies to weigh in -- and then pass a good law. Courts interpret law, they aren't supposed to make it, and the Supreme Court certainly isn't even remotely qualified to determine what's the best policy for a healthy dynamic tech economy here. The law is so ambiguous here that Congress is shirking its duties by not establishing relevant law here.
- skybrian 7y ago
  This isn't at all unusual. You might have been taught in school about the courts "interpreting" the law, but a lot of American law was inherited from English common law which does basically come from court decisions, and a lot was created by court decisions since then. In times like these where Congress is often deadlocked, someone needs to make decisions. Congress can pass a new law if they can get their act together.
- legulere 7y ago
  You can still have laws preceding APIs that are abstract enough to also apply for it well enough. In Germany for instance we have a special clause that specifically allows reverse engineering for making something compatible with another product.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- CSMastermind 7y ago
  Congress can still pass a law after the court's decision that would change the outcome.
byuu 7y ago
> "We are confident the Supreme Court will ... reject Google’s continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for copying Oracle’s innovations." Serious question: which part of Oracle buying Java from Sun was innovative?
- Spivak 7y ago
  I feel like that’s being super rude to the devs at Oracle that have been constantly innovating and improving the language. Java has changed a lot in the last 9 years. Oracle’s upcoming design of continuations I think is genuinely novel and will inspire a lot of other languages’ implementations.
  - byuu 7y ago
    Sorry if it wasn't phrased well, but that's what I was meaning by it being a serious question: does this lawsuit cover code written by Oracle engineers? It's my understanding the lawsuit was based on code developed by Sun, given they announced the lawsuit almost immediately after acquiring them in 2010, so it seems disingenuous to claim this is about their innovations, rather than Sun's. It feels equally rude to those Sun engineers to act as if Java in 2010 was their innovation. Buying something makes it your property, but not your creation. Whatever Oracle contributed after the acquisition, certainly would count as their innovations, but that was not the original basis for this lawsuit.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    The lawsuit was filed less than a month after the purchase went through. Oracle's engineers hadn't touched Java before their lawyers started attacking Google.
- Stupulous 7y ago
  I imagine the correct read is 'the innovations belonging to oracle', rather than 'the innovations performed by oracle'.
  - byuu 7y ago
kchoudhu 7y ago
Super pumped to see the fate of modern computing decided by a bunch octogenarians who think "the blue E" is the internet.
dezren39 7y ago
please dear god just copy paste alsup's ruling. either his first saying you can't copyright it, or his second that clean room interface is fair use.
narrator 7y ago
I think one could make a good analogy to Baker v. Selden[1], a case from the 1900s about the copyrightability of blank accounting forms, in that APIs are the modern day equivalent of blank forms that are filled out and submitted to a computer. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
nyxtom 7y ago
And just when you thought naming was difficult enough
gpm 7y ago
Notes on scheduling for anyone who wants to follow along: Google now has 45 days to file a brief on the merits that explains their position. Once that is filed, Oracle has 30 days to file a brief on the merits that explains their position. Google then has 30 more days to file a reply to Oracle's brief. That brings us to the 28th of February, assuming everyone uses all their time (and no more). The court can extend all those deadlines. Once all the briefs have been filed the case will (probably) be scheduled for oral argument. It looks like oral argument is usually scheduled several months out, and the last day for oral argument this term is April 29. It might meet that deadline, otherwise it will be pushed to next October. If the oral argument is heard this term then we can expect a ruling by the time the court goes into recess for the year (end of june). Of course a ruling doesn't mean the case is over, it may well then return to lower courts for more argument. (It almost certainly will for various details, like attorney's fees and/or damages). This case started August 13, 2010. It's been almost a decade. Something is very wrong with how our court system functions.
- kijin 7y ago
  A decade is obviously too long, but there is some value in taking a long time to decide important matters. If you rush everything in a short time span, you risk getting carried away by the public opinion and political environment of the moment. This can be especially problematic when it comes to the kind of deep constitutional issues that we expect the Supreme Court to grapple with; the court needs to keep a certain distance from the propaganda du jour. Besides, it's not uncommon for people on the death row to dig up evidence that exonerates them many years after the case was deemed closed. If we sped up the whole legal system and carried out sentences asap, they might not have been given enough time to do so. Meanwhile, the system can be surprisingly agile if it needs to be. New York Times Co. v. United states only took 12 days from the first hearing to the Supreme Court ruling! Of course that was because Nixon wanted to rush the case, but in the end he lost hard and the heat of public opinion probably didn't help, either. In the case of Google v. Oracle, nobody seems to be particularly in a hurry. Both sides can afford to drag out the dispute as long as they want to.
  - gpm 7y ago
martin1975 7y ago
I'm just hoping the judges see this for what it really is - Oracle's unabashed greed. Google's pales in comparison.
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  Google is not greedy? Oracle paid money for Sun and the property Sun owned at the time. Google said, nope, we'll just copy that property for ourselves and keep our money. That seems greedier.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    Sun bought and continued development of OpenOffice to avoid paying MS Office licence fees. Not wanting to pay licensing fees, and therefore writing your own interoperable clean room reimplementation is both legal and moral.
gorgoiler 7y ago
Thinking from first principles, and forgive me for going into hippie philosophical mode here but I can’t see how an API can have copyright that is owned. Creating an API is of course a creative process. Getting the API right is, for me, the most creative part of programming. When well written, it describes to a human how the software truly works, with the implementation really being the computer version of what the function name is already telling you. A browser rendering engineer could be defined just as much by the model that the DOM API describes as it is defined by the actual source code. They both describe the outside and inside of the same thing, a system which, when it’s interface is shared, is shared between us all and not just under the sole ownership of the first person to describe it. It’s hard to see an API therefore, particularly a published one, as a traditional piece of intellectual property that can be subject to copyright. One cannot copyright F=ma or e=mc^2. Once these object models about software are discovered they are like descriptions of the natural world and their formulae are open and shared for all to use. Yes: how you build your specific machine that makes use of and conforms to the API — the actual source code for function implementations — can be your intellectual property, but the underlying description of the natural world and its API are discoveries that are part of the commons, for all to interact with, use, and re-use. The only difference between natural laws, in my analogy to physics, and software APIs is that there is only one physical world with a limited set of natural laws that describe it. With software engineering we create our own new universes everyday, but they are common universes for us all to share.
- m1sta_ 7y ago
  It needs to be its own unique class of IP. The intersection between industrial design, spare parts, and patents deal with some similar issues.
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    You can’t copyright an invention, as another commenter here has said.
    - m1sta_ 7y ago
trashface 7y ago
Thinking cynically, could an Oracle win increase demand for programmers? Companies may need to hire lots of extra programmers to audit what they have, and possibly rewrite or make trivial and mechanical API changes to avoid infringement. Sort of like the broken window theory from economics - break ALL the windows. I mean, API-copyright plumbing wouldn't be my first choice of work, but might make for a decent part time remote job while I spent most of my energy on something else that is actually useful.
onyva 7y ago
When this started Oracle was the evil one. Now we have your run of the mill predatory capitalism vs a particularly nasty and dangerous form of surveillance capitalism, which makes oracle look harmless.
fmakunbound 7y ago
Anyone else worried about the technical illiterate deciding this one?
Skgqie1 7y ago
Assuming Oracle wins, what would be necessary to differentiate an implementation from their owned interfaces? For example, would a method named FuckOracle_min be different enough to not run afoul - or is it the plain text description of the API that covers what does / doesn't constitute infringement?
jhanschoo 7y ago
In the case that Oracle wins solely on Structure, Sequence, and Organization, I don't see how such a ruling immediately spells doom for competitors trying to interoperate. Competitors can still publish a functionally identical but differently organized API, then provide a competitor2us.sh script to statically change references to their own API. Sure, the friction is higher, but not unreasonable.
- alok-g 7y ago
  Wow. This makes sense.
jonathonadler 7y ago
This is an interesting comparison to Dataflex vs. Powerflex: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html In this case, the use of “copied” reserved words was at the heart of it. I never understood why reserved words could be protected.
runn1ng 7y ago
I am mostly surprised this is still ongoing... isn’t it going for around 10 years already?
- aiCeivi9 7y ago
  SCO took even longer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes . It stops only when one side can no longer pay the lawyers :/.
didibus 7y ago
I can't help and wonder though, as much as I think it would be madness for APIs to be copyrighted, including a language's standard library. Would I just have more job opportunities as a dev if it was? Since much more work would be needed to provide alternative solutions to all these?
fahrixds 7y ago
true.
aurizon 7y ago
My mechanic says he can not service my car because the nut to open the hood latch has a copyrighted shape and the owner of the copyright on that shape advised me not to use my adjustable wrench or he would sue, but I could rent his crescent wrench each time I want to service may car, or I could keep the creascent wrench at home and the installed counter on the wrench would talk to his billing software and he would send an invoice every month... In 3 words or less, compare and contrast this to the Google-Oracle copyright fiasco...
pfdietz 7y ago
One effect of a ruling that APIs cannot be copyrighted would be to make it more likely they can be subject to patent protection. That's probably better, but don't be surprised if we see API patents.
ascotan 7y ago
If the supreme court rules in favor of Oracle here, you can expect trolls to start suing small businesses for copyright infringement based off of old software APIs. I think Americans should be encouraging tech startups not laying legal minefields for them.
jl6 7y ago
What’s the current status, today, right now, of the copyrightability of APIs? Does the Federal Circuit decision stand because it hasn’t yet been overruled or is it not yet in force because it’s being appealed?
microcolonel 7y ago
What amazes me most is that Oracle has been able to find any expert witness willing to put his name to this frivolous case.
redm 7y ago
I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but Google created this problem because they didn't want to pay Oracle for commercial use of Java. This isn't always a problem. When Compaq did the same thing to create the first IBM compatible PC's, they did so very carefully, ensuring there was no one working on the team with prior knowledge. I don't believe Google did the same thing and that's where my problem is. If they can look through Oracle's code, and just re-write it slightly to do the same thing to avoid commercial licensing, that doesn't help Open Source, it hurts it.
greatjack613 7y ago
Was wondering would it be possible to get a petition on change.org started in googles favor? I think we need the court to understand the ramifcations of oracles arguements. No more openjdk, etc.
jhanschoo 7y ago
Important note: The SC has already denied to hear on whether APIs' SSOs are copyrightable, suggesting that it agrees with the Fed. Cir. opinion that they are. This hearing is about Google's Fair Use defense.... and I don't expect Google to win on fair use unless the SC intends to really break new ground on fair use analyses.
drallison 7y ago
If the future of computer programming is important to you, read the briefing calling for cert in this case. A timeline and references can be found at http://www.project-disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/ http://www.project-disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/ . For a programmer, the weight of the evidence against copyright for APIs is conclusive as presented in the briefing. Unfortunately, there are no programmers on the Supreme Court; while Judge Alsop did learn Java Programming so he could understand the issues,the Circuit Judges who reviewed Alsop's decision were not so dedicated.

522 points by nwrk 7y ago

I hate to say it, but I’m not optimistic about Google’s case here. From a purely technical point of view, APIs being free to reuse is an awesome thing that makes for a more vibrant and competitive software ecosystem. At the same time, Oracle’s characterization of their API as “original software” is not entirely off base, as anyone who has spent time and energy creating and API would know. The amount of design and work required to create an elegant and useful API is huge, and while it would irreparably harm software as a field to call it copyrightable, calling it anything other than an “original” work is a weak position. Personally, I’m dreading the outcome of this case.

thesausageking 7y ago
Google's argument is that it falls under fair use to do a clean room implementation of the APIs. District Judge Alsup agreed with this legal idea: "So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API. It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical."
- gpm 7y ago
  Google has several arguments, I find most of them persuasive. The fair use one is sort of a fallback. The more immediate argument is that APIs aren't copyrightable material, since there isn't more than one way to write them. You can't write the API differently and still let existing java programs run with your standard library.
  - glofish 7y ago
    They could design their own API and provide an "invisible shim" that transforms the calls to the original API into theirs.
    - gpm 7y ago
      To implement such an "invisible shim" you would still need to write the exact same API that oracle is claiming is copyrighted to let other programs build against it. It's not the internals of the functions that this case is about, it's literally about "class ArrayList { void clear() { [this part excluded from case] } ... }"
      - glofish 7y ago
        not exactly. there is a big difference between an API exposed to all other programmers in the world - versus one that is there for say compatibility. Their entire API works the same way as Java system and you program it as Java - it would be very different if say Android was programmed in Go and they had a way to translate Java programs into Go.
        gpm 7y ago
        I assume your first post was in response to my "you can't write the API differently" paragraph. If not we are talking past eachother, sorry. If so, your followup is that focusing on Google's actions is missing the point. If there is only one (or a small number) of ways to write it then it isn't copyrighted, so Google can do literally whatever it wants. If there are many ways to write it, the argument fails, and Google taking a more minimal approach to copying it wouldn't change that (it might change the fair use analysis, but that's a separate discussion). It's more of a nitpick, but your reply also exaggerates the scope of the case. No one is arguing in this case that Google was not free to implement Android or an API in Java, they are arguing about re-implementing Java's standard library APIs. As far as this case goes I don't think there is any salient distinction between implementing android in Go, and implementing android in Java with a different standard library api.
- tenebrisalietum 7y ago
  The whole PC industry was deeply affected, in a positive manner for consumers, in a negative manner for IBM, by Compaq's reverse engineering of IBM's BIOS ROM API. Imagine if users of BIOS/UEFI API had to pay royalties to IBM (which derived it from CP/M).
  - hollerith 7y ago
    >Imagine if users of BIOS/UEFI API had to pay royalties I always thought that every PC maker did have to pay royalties to Phoenix or one of the other BIOS vendors. I know that open-source BIOSes, e.g., coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS), exist, but I got the impression that even at this late stage in the BIOS game, only a minority of machines ship with them. I always thought that Compaq created its clean-room implementation because IBM outright refused to license their BIOS (to Compaq or anyone else).
    - jpollock 7y ago
      Let's rephrase... Imagine a world where Compaq was unable to create a cleanroom implementation of IBM's BIOS because that involved re-implementing the copyrighted APIs.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - all2 7y ago
      Where I work we have a line item for every computer we make for a BIOS royalty. So this happens at least sometimes.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        On the copyright of the actual software by Phoenix or Award or whoever, not an API licensing fee.
    - simcop2387 7y ago
      that's the difference though, theyrr free to make one or use any of the existing ones with the conditions of the authors. they're not forbidden to make their own or use a competitor's like the oracle ruling could otherwise mean.
- saghm 7y ago
  That was only after the appeals court stuck down Alsup's previous ruling that APIs couldn't be copyrighted and sent the issue back down to him to determine whether it was fair use.
ocdtrekkie 7y ago
My understanding is that this case has produced emails inside Google about essentially how to avoid licensing Java. In the light of the incredible profit machine Google is, and how large a monopoly Android is, its hard to imagine any judge looking favorably on a plan to avoid paying licensing for something to build a multi-billion dollar industry. That being said, I feel ruling against Oracle would be also very perilous for open software from for profit entities, as it would have a harmful chilling effect on companies trying to dual license or keep their technology open. Arguments Google had made in earlier stages used the GPL-licensed OpenJDK to justify using their non-GPL implementation.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  It is kinda interesting, that if Oracle wins this, then Google, and specifically Android will effectively become GPL-infringers.
  - alok-g 7y ago
    I believe there's more. Oracle had specific clauses in the licence terms to prevent usage of JVM on mobile. In other words, Google actually releasing Android under GPL is not enough for the case to be finished off.
- danShumway 7y ago
  I don't get this perspective. The Open Source movement relies on adversarial operability far more than for-profit entities do. Would WINE be legal if Oracle won? Would Oracle's OpenOffice be able to read and save Microsoft document formats? Replicating APIs has always been a huge part of the Open Source movement.
  - gpm 7y ago
    The Wine case is particularly amusing, because WSL (v1) would be equally infringing in the exact opposite direction.
    - deleted 7y ago
danShumway 7y ago
We have precedent that game mechanics can't be copyrighted -- they get classified as "inventions" and have to be patented instead. Obviously IANAL, but to me as a game designer, mechanics aren't any less creative work than narrative. In fact, I'm spending more of my creative energy on mechanics than I am on story. So the lines to me just seem incredibly arbitrary, or at least I don't understand the legal differences well enough to figure out intuitively where they lie. I am incredibly grateful that game mechanics can't be copyrighted, but game mechanics don't feel like inventions to me. A game mechanic is how I express an idea. I tried to make a prediction about which way this would go, and I genuinely don't know -- not even that my prediction is uncertain, I don't feel like I know enough to even make a prediction at all. It does make me nervous. I think it's important that the Supreme Court hear it, and I'm glad they agreed to, but it would be utterly disastrous if this got decided in Oracle's favor. My (perhaps incorrect) impression is that the Supreme Court is not particularly fond of the 9th, and have something of a history of slapping down attempts at copyright expansion. A ruling against Oracle would be fantastic, and would maybe even open the door for talking about blocking copyright on grounds of compatibility. I guess I'm just nervous because it feels like the stakes are really high. At this point, there's nothing really that people like me can do, right? It's just up to Oracle and Google's lawyers?
- twright 7y ago
  > At this point, there's nothing really that people like me can do, right? It's just up to Oracle and Google's lawyers? Yes, with regard to this case, there’s nothing we can do at this point. In the longer term, it’s up to law makers on the state and federal level to address shortcomings and expansions of copyright law. So vote! (Or, I guess if you are particularly wealthy, lobby!)
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  You, or an industry group you are part of, could file an amicus brief, but, yeah, there's not a lot.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    You could also try to get your company to file an amicus brief as well.
monocasa 7y ago
Taking time and energy doesn't define copyright. There's tons of acts that take time and energy, and don't grant you a century long government backed monopoly on anything almost like it. For instance, recipes, and tables of contents aren't copyrightable. Going into case law, Sony v Bleem made it pretty clear that clean room reimplementations of APIs are on the table. Going into US code, the otherwise crappy DMCA explicitly allows reverse engineering for interoperability. ie. interoperability even when the original vendor won't even tell you what the API is. Going into practicalities, who owns SQL? Who owns POSIX? The entire idea that APIs can have copyright is blatantly in contrast to decades of law, and is only happening because the CAFC is going off on it's own and ignoring 9th circuit precedent.
- tzs 7y ago
  > Taking time and energy doesn't define copyright For those who would like more detail on this, the major case on this in the US is Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) [1]. This is not necessarily the case in other countries. See [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  > Going into case law, Sony v Bleem made it pretty clear that clean room reimplementations of APIs are on the table. Sony sued Bleem because of screenshots. The legality of compatible products such as emulators was not evaluated by the court. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=11837224078052556056 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=118372240780525... > The legality of the emulator is not at issue in this lawsuit. > The issue in this appeal is the validity of the method by which Bleem is advertising its product. > In various advertising media, Bleem has included comparative "screen shots" of Sony PlayStation games. > We conclude that it is a fair use for Bleem to advertise comparatively only between what PlayStation games actually look like on a television and what they actually look like on a computer when played with the emulator.
eqvinox 7y ago
> From a purely technical point of view, The technical point of view needs to be combined with the legal one here, and — > At the same time, Oracle’s characterization of their API as “original software” is not entirely off base, as anyone who has spent time and energy creating and API would know. The amount of design and work required to create an elegant and useful API is huge, and while it would irreparably harm software as a field to call it copyrightable, calling it anything other than an “original” work is a weak position. just because something takes a lot of work, that doesn't automatically mean it is copyrightable. An API doesn't implement anything, it describes a function. Even if it describes a lot of functions and they mesh together really well, there's a distinction between "what" a program does and "how" a program does something. To compare with literature copyright, there are a ton of romance novels out there — pretty sure you can find a lot of common patterns on "what" story they tell. However, only the "how" is copyrighted, you can't prevent anyone from writing a story with the same outline as an existing one. (For literature, the problem becomes really tricky since the crossing over from "what" to "how" is kinda fluid; e.g. you can't just swap out character names. Software is actually easier there.)
- marcoseliziario 7y ago
  Exactly. An implementation of an API is copyrightable. Not the API itself. With a lot of goodwill, with some very generous interpretation, an API could be patentable, but copyrightable seems absurd to me.
- smadurange 7y ago
  I don't think the comparison with literature makes sense. API is what defines a software. For instance, if someone copies Microsoft suite full public interface (including the UI which is part of the interface it would be a problem even if the implementation was different). API signature is the UI equivalent for a library/programming interface software. So, I agree with the original commentors concerns here. Oracle's got a point too.
  - eqvinox 7y ago
    > API signature is the UI equivalent for a library/programming interface software. It isn't. "A main window with toolbars and an edit area." is the equivalent of the API signature. The layout, icons, ordering, etc. is artistic work of the "how" and copyrightable. (FWIW by your logic, LibreOffice would be violating Microsoft's copyright already and we could only ever have one office suite in the world.)
abledon 7y ago
Wasn't there some judge a couple years back who , in order to understand a case properly, taught himself java ?
- gumby 7y ago
  The very same judge, Alsup, whose ruling was overturned, hence this Hail Mary/saving throw to the Supreme Court.
- elygre 7y ago
  I wonder how he deals with medical malpractice cases.
jcranmer 7y ago
If you read the amici briefs, some of the people who actually wrote that API are explicitly disagreeing with Oracle's position.
- bondolo 7y ago
  This would seem to call in to question their being "friends of the court" rather than associated with a particular litigant, especially in the cases where they chose to also work for Google and likely have an a interest in the outcome of this specific case. As opposed to legitimate amici who are generally more concerned with the precedent.
  - zucker42 7y ago
    If you're talking about the 78 programmer amici brief, only 12 have any connection at all to Google (only 5 are employees), and each of those are affected personally, beyond association with Google. This is addressed directly in the brief. Also when the commenter said "wrote the API", he was referring to the Oracle/Sun Java API, not the Google Android API.
wyldfire 7y ago
> From a purely technical point of view, APIs being free to reuse is an awesome thing that makes for a more vibrant and competitive software ecosystem This is not merely a technical benefit, it's a practical one and represents the status quo. The fact that there's no precedent isn't because it's new, it's because no one ever thought it was infringing before.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Nobody might believe that such a thing is infringing but there are plenty of people who are mad that a competitor just copies and pastes their API. Smartcar was such a case that made it to HN. I really do think the determination for this case ought to be if you copy an API to facilitate interaction with existing software then you should be in the clear. If you do the same because it’s easier than coming up with your own then I think it should be infringement.
zmmmmm 7y ago
I don't think it's actually about that. APIs are facts, and facts are not copyrightable. How is an API a fact? You have a system, in the real world. It is a "thing". There are facts about this thing: if you send it particular bytes, it does X, if you send other bytes, it does Y. The fact that it does this is empirically derived. There are not two or more options for it, it's like gravity or electromagnetism. APIs are facts about the systems they apply to, so while there is creativity in designing them, there is no creativity in building a system that interacts with them. There is exactly one way derived from the empirical fact of how it works. Where the case IS weak is that there IS creativity in how you document and organise the API. And I'm pretty sure Google's re-implementation was very similarly organised to the real Java. That will be the crack Oracle will be trying to exploit here. But its not actually about the original work being "original" or even "creative".
jrochkind1 7y ago
In general, the amount of time/energy/cost invested in something is not a prime indicator of whether it is copyrightable, under the law. This is a misconception. Facts are not copyrightable no matter how much time/energy/cost went into compiling them, and this is clearly established law. Google's case is that an API specification or implementation is more like a set of facts. Which as a software engineer, seems pretty plausible to me, they do seem like a set of facts, a description of fact about how software works. On the other hand, unlike facts, they were not purely observed, but were indeed invented by humans -- but recipes aren't copyrightable either, even though they are not observed but invented too. Neither are the rules of a game. These are all considered more like 'facts' than creative works. Doesn't matter if eg you spent years and millions of dollars researching food chemistry to make your recipe. I don't think its entirely clear who will win, but I don't think Google's case is as weak as you think, although i agree that Oracle's contention isn't entirely off base. . In particular, in general, how much time and energy went into making something is not generally one of the most significant factors in determining copyright or fair use. (Additionally, the well-established law around reverse engineering and creating clones -- that it is allowed -- is in Google's favor, as that analogy seems pretty strong too). Copyright law is -- has always been, or at least for 100 years -- about a bunch of competing factors balanced against each other. And when it comes to technology advances, has always relied on analogies to previous technologies and industries, and who has the most persuasive analogy. And then we have the fact that the people deciding what analogy applies best may not entirely understand the technology as a social fact...
bborud 7y ago
I don't agree with your argument. I agree that designing good APIs requires a great deal of work, but Sun/Oracle were not alone in doing this work. In fact, they had considerable help from community, competitors and customers. Java APIs are to a great degree a collaborative effort and it isn't right that Oracle should be the sole benefactor of this uncompensated work that has only made their product more valuable. If this is true for these particular APIs isn't very relevant in my view. What is relevant is that the Java platform as a whole has gained much from its community. Without the Java platform the APIs would hardly have any relevance at all.
- alok-g 7y ago
  What you are questioning then is not that whether APIs should be copyrightable or not, but rather whether Oracle solely should have a copyright over the Java APIs.
  - bborud 7y ago
    I am saying that if they want to claim ownership of something they can’t pretend the Java community didn’t contribute significantly to the development of the Java APIs. If you are asking for my opinion: extorting those who use your API is always a poor long term business decision because it proves ill faith and undermines trust. Oracle already has a problem with corporations making a conscious effort to move away from their database platforms.
burtonator 7y ago
If Oracle wins the Open Source community should adopt a new license to punitively punish companies like Oracle who abuse this system. We can adapt our license to allow anyone to use the API except if they're using API licensing themselves, at which point they would be in violation.
drallison 7y ago
The possibility that Oracle might prevail keeps me awake some nights. Oracle's "original software" is not. It is derivative of other work, for example, Smalltalk and its libraries. The idea of including explicit interface declarations with each module was, I think, introduced by the programming language SUE designed by Rick Holt. Copyright does not protect ideas; copyright can only protect the expression. And when the two are intrinsically combined, there cannot be copyright.

m463 7y ago

I think APIs open for interoperability is better for society. As an example, the Z80 and the 8080 were interoperable and it was better for everyone.

meddlepal 7y ago
What's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution which is what the SCOTUS will judge this on.
- gpm 7y ago
  Constitution? It seems much more likely that this will be decided on statutory grounds than constitutional ones.
- kerpele 7y ago
  It's kind of interesting that a piece of legislation written hundreds of years ago will be used to decide something like this.
- magicalist 7y ago
  > What's better for society doesn't matter in the face of the Constitution which is what the SCOTUS will judge this on. The Constitution only says > The Congress shall have Power [...] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. most of copyright is defined in statute (the various copyright acts) and court precedent.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Yeah, the Copyright Clause is pretty unusual. More than literally anything else in the Constitution, copyrights and patents actually are supposed to be judged in light of what's better for society. Most stuff in the Constitution gives the government the power to do X (sometimes stating explicitly that it's for reason Y). The structure of the copyright clause is that Congress has the power to do Y, using mechanism X — a strict reading of that means that the government cannot do X for reasons other than Y, and cannot pursue Y using means other than X, and definitely shouldn't do X for reasons of not-Y.

vessenes 7y ago

I'd say almost every software engineer should be rooting for Google here. The implications of being able to claim copyright infringement on anyone implementing an Application Programming Interface are staggering - it would impact every open source project that tried to interoperate with any company's services, for instance. The world is not going to be better for extending the protections Oracle wants here. Alsup's ruling is sane, shows his clear understanding of coding and the history of Java and how it was licensed out to the world under Sun, and is really very simple to understand: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522459 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120531172522... The appeals court fucked this up, hard. I would like to think Alsup's ruling will be upheld -- groklaw has fantastic quotes from him during the trial. At one point, he himself notes he had coded from the spec some of the functions Oracle complained about and disagreed with Oracle counsel statements. Refreshing from our judicial branch, to say the least.

snagglegaggle 7y ago
Issue exists with instruction sets as well. If Oracle wins everyone who has written a compiler for an instruction set they did not have explicit permission to write one for is in violation.
- gpm 7y ago
  There's probably a better case for compilers being fair use than this (not that this doesn't have a great case). I'd be more concerned about emulators and actual chips. People have been assuming that copyright doesn't apply to APIs for so long that I'm sure there's any number of cases of accidental "copyright infringement as defined by Oracle". I'm just not sure that compilers are a prime example (at least as relating to instruction sets).
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    "Probably". Hah. That just shows the ramifications of Oracle winning this case are fucking insane. We've been operating as if this stuff isn't copyrightable for the last 50 years. You may as well burn the whole industry to the ground if they have their way.

causality0 7y ago

Does Oracle actually do anything useful? Their primary function seems to be to vampirically suck the life out of other technology companies.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

Good. In my view, the existing ruling desperately needs to be overturned. And I'm cautiously optimistic. The Supreme Court has shown itself to be far more sane on IP than the Federal Circuit.

NotMelNoGuitars 7y ago
If you don't mind expanding, interested to hear why you believe the current ruling should be overturned.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  The current holding that APIs are copyrightable, and reimplementing them for interoperability is not fair use. This is in direct contrast to decades of consensus that APIs are not copyrightable, and furthermore, there is a particular procedure to go through [clean room technique, which Google did] to ensure that the API is reimplemented without infringing any copyright. Letting this ruling stand would mean that nearly every piece of software you use infringed someone's copyright.
  - NotMelNoGuitars 7y ago
    Ah, gotcha - so the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit* decided in favor of Oracle in this case. Thanks for taking the time to type that out, I've been living under a bit of a rock it seems! *corrected from "second district court"
    - monocasa 7y ago
      The CAFC, not the second district.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Pretty much what jcranmer said: The status quo, for decades, has been that you can do that. So this would be a drastic change to the rules by which we play the game. More: Recall that copyright lasts close to forever. (95 years for corporations, if I recall correctly.) This ruling, then, would have allowed IBM to sue every BIOS clone maker, and keep a stranglehold on the PC market, and still have that stranglehold to this day, and be able to keep it until 2076. Then, on August 2, 2076, then we could get IBM-compatible PCs. Compare that to actual history, and you can see why I think the current ruling is horrible.

anon1m0us 7y ago

It is property law and the ability to protect one's rights to property that has granted the creators of property a return on their investment of resources into property. If creators of property cannot protect their property, there will be less return on that property and thus, less incentive to create it. Oracle bought Sun, and with that purchase, the ownership of intellectual property in the form of the Java API. Google then proceeded to copy that property into their own property without abiding by the usage restrictions Oracle, the property owner, specified. That was theft of Oracle's property. If the Supreme Court does not uphold protections of property, I believe, we will see less investment in such property. I am not sure if that is good or bad for the future of the world, but I do believe had Sun not had property rights to Java, they wouldn't have created it.

pvelagal 7y ago
How about similarities of C++ and Java ? Who copies whom ? int, float, char key words ? if - then - else, while loop, for loop, curly braces { } comments // and /* main() method ? socket API : socket, connect, listen, accept ? and So many keywords similar to C++ ? (break, continue, char, double, new, public, private, return, static etc.) Java benefitted from Collective knowledge of Computer Science and design patterns that were invented outside of Sun microsystems. The JVM is written in C++ ? Can we cay JVM APIs are wrappers around C++ API ? Do they pay Bjarne Stroustrop ?
erikpukinskis 7y ago
What property has Google destroyed that Oracle is trying to protect? Owning a property doesn’t give you the right to sue other people who develop a property that offers the same services.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- anon1m0us 7y ago
  No one said they destroyed it. Google appropriated Oracle's intellectual property for Google's own use, specifically because Google didn't want to pay for the use of that intellectual property. If I write a book and you read it, love it, and then retype the book, print it and sell it, you have violated my property rights. You and many others here don't want it to be that way, but it is exactly that way.

deleted 7y ago

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gojomo 7y ago

~grellas's comment on sibling story that didn't win the upvote-to-front-page tournament: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21548334

shadowgovt 7y ago

I'd pretend I don't have an opinion on this topic, but I appear to be wearing my "YOU WOULDN'T REIMPLEMENT AN API" t-shirt in the MPAA scare-commercial font.

tehjoker 7y ago

This case clearly shows how taking something from the public and making is private is essentially a greedy and harmful activity. Unfortunately, our economy is based on this idea.... it doesn't have to be though.

anon1m0us 7y ago
They didn't take it from the public any more than Led Zeppelin took their songs from the public when they sued those who violated their IP rights. Software has a real and tangible value. Songs ... well, you decide their value, but I don't understand why the value songs create should be protectable, but software not. That's really what this is about. This is about granting to those who write software the same rights to that property as anyone else who has rights to what they write.
- monocasa 7y ago
  Lol, what? You still have copyright over software you write regardless of how this case goes. It's whether you can shut down other people's works just for being compatible with yours that's at stake.
  - anon1m0us 7y ago
    "Just for being compatible" is disingenuous at best. Ask yourself, "Why did they copy the Java API? Why didn't they use Python or Go or Dart?" They invented Dart after all.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      Golang and Dart didn't exist at the time. And Google knows all too well how large Python projects break down, that's why they made Golang.
- tehjoker 7y ago
  We make things protectable so that private entities can cordon them off from the public so that they can make money from them by selling copies. If we had a different funding arrangement for the arts, such things would certainly be unnecessary. In this case, we can clearly see that privatizing APIs gains the public nothing and Oracle and co. lots of things.

crazygringo 7y ago

It's ridiculous this is being decided by the courts instead of legislatively. Fair use doctrine was obviously never intended to apply to reimplementing API's either way because it didn't exist yet. Rather than have a court make up some kind of ultimately arbitrary precedent ruling either way, Congress should be debating the ramifications of whether reimplementing API's is explicitly fair use or not, considering both pros and cons to the economy, with opportunity for all tech companies to weigh in -- and then pass a good law. Courts interpret law, they aren't supposed to make it, and the Supreme Court certainly isn't even remotely qualified to determine what's the best policy for a healthy dynamic tech economy here. The law is so ambiguous here that Congress is shirking its duties by not establishing relevant law here.

skybrian 7y ago
This isn't at all unusual. You might have been taught in school about the courts "interpreting" the law, but a lot of American law was inherited from English common law which does basically come from court decisions, and a lot was created by court decisions since then. In times like these where Congress is often deadlocked, someone needs to make decisions. Congress can pass a new law if they can get their act together.
legulere 7y ago
You can still have laws preceding APIs that are abstract enough to also apply for it well enough. In Germany for instance we have a special clause that specifically allows reverse engineering for making something compatible with another product.
deleted 7y ago
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CSMastermind 7y ago
Congress can still pass a law after the court's decision that would change the outcome.

byuu 7y ago

> "We are confident the Supreme Court will ... reject Google’s continuing efforts to avoid responsibility for copying Oracle’s innovations." Serious question: which part of Oracle buying Java from Sun was innovative?

Spivak 7y ago
I feel like that’s being super rude to the devs at Oracle that have been constantly innovating and improving the language. Java has changed a lot in the last 9 years. Oracle’s upcoming design of continuations I think is genuinely novel and will inspire a lot of other languages’ implementations.
- byuu 7y ago
  Sorry if it wasn't phrased well, but that's what I was meaning by it being a serious question: does this lawsuit cover code written by Oracle engineers? It's my understanding the lawsuit was based on code developed by Sun, given they announced the lawsuit almost immediately after acquiring them in 2010, so it seems disingenuous to claim this is about their innovations, rather than Sun's. It feels equally rude to those Sun engineers to act as if Java in 2010 was their innovation. Buying something makes it your property, but not your creation. Whatever Oracle contributed after the acquisition, certainly would count as their innovations, but that was not the original basis for this lawsuit.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  The lawsuit was filed less than a month after the purchase went through. Oracle's engineers hadn't touched Java before their lawyers started attacking Google.
Stupulous 7y ago
I imagine the correct read is 'the innovations belonging to oracle', rather than 'the innovations performed by oracle'.
- byuu 7y ago

kchoudhu 7y ago

Super pumped to see the fate of modern computing decided by a bunch octogenarians who think "the blue E" is the internet.

dezren39 7y ago

please dear god just copy paste alsup's ruling. either his first saying you can't copyright it, or his second that clean room interface is fair use.

narrator 7y ago

I think one could make a good analogy to Baker v. Selden[1], a case from the 1900s about the copyrightability of blank accounting forms, in that APIs are the modern day equivalent of blank forms that are filled out and submitted to a computer. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden

deleted 7y ago
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nyxtom 7y ago

And just when you thought naming was difficult enough

gpm 7y ago

Notes on scheduling for anyone who wants to follow along: Google now has 45 days to file a brief on the merits that explains their position. Once that is filed, Oracle has 30 days to file a brief on the merits that explains their position. Google then has 30 more days to file a reply to Oracle's brief. That brings us to the 28th of February, assuming everyone uses all their time (and no more). The court can extend all those deadlines. Once all the briefs have been filed the case will (probably) be scheduled for oral argument. It looks like oral argument is usually scheduled several months out, and the last day for oral argument this term is April 29. It might meet that deadline, otherwise it will be pushed to next October. If the oral argument is heard this term then we can expect a ruling by the time the court goes into recess for the year (end of june). Of course a ruling doesn't mean the case is over, it may well then return to lower courts for more argument. (It almost certainly will for various details, like attorney's fees and/or damages). This case started August 13, 2010. It's been almost a decade. Something is very wrong with how our court system functions.

kijin 7y ago
A decade is obviously too long, but there is some value in taking a long time to decide important matters. If you rush everything in a short time span, you risk getting carried away by the public opinion and political environment of the moment. This can be especially problematic when it comes to the kind of deep constitutional issues that we expect the Supreme Court to grapple with; the court needs to keep a certain distance from the propaganda du jour. Besides, it's not uncommon for people on the death row to dig up evidence that exonerates them many years after the case was deemed closed. If we sped up the whole legal system and carried out sentences asap, they might not have been given enough time to do so. Meanwhile, the system can be surprisingly agile if it needs to be. New York Times Co. v. United states only took 12 days from the first hearing to the Supreme Court ruling! Of course that was because Nixon wanted to rush the case, but in the end he lost hard and the heat of public opinion probably didn't help, either. In the case of Google v. Oracle, nobody seems to be particularly in a hurry. Both sides can afford to drag out the dispute as long as they want to.
- gpm 7y ago

martin1975 7y ago

I'm just hoping the judges see this for what it really is - Oracle's unabashed greed. Google's pales in comparison.

anon1m0us 7y ago
Google is not greedy? Oracle paid money for Sun and the property Sun owned at the time. Google said, nope, we'll just copy that property for ourselves and keep our money. That seems greedier.
- monocasa 7y ago
  Sun bought and continued development of OpenOffice to avoid paying MS Office licence fees. Not wanting to pay licensing fees, and therefore writing your own interoperable clean room reimplementation is both legal and moral.

gorgoiler 7y ago

Thinking from first principles, and forgive me for going into hippie philosophical mode here but I can’t see how an API can have copyright that is owned. Creating an API is of course a creative process. Getting the API right is, for me, the most creative part of programming. When well written, it describes to a human how the software truly works, with the implementation really being the computer version of what the function name is already telling you. A browser rendering engineer could be defined just as much by the model that the DOM API describes as it is defined by the actual source code. They both describe the outside and inside of the same thing, a system which, when it’s interface is shared, is shared between us all and not just under the sole ownership of the first person to describe it. It’s hard to see an API therefore, particularly a published one, as a traditional piece of intellectual property that can be subject to copyright. One cannot copyright F=ma or e=mc^2. Once these object models about software are discovered they are like descriptions of the natural world and their formulae are open and shared for all to use. Yes: how you build your specific machine that makes use of and conforms to the API — the actual source code for function implementations — can be your intellectual property, but the underlying description of the natural world and its API are discoveries that are part of the commons, for all to interact with, use, and re-use. The only difference between natural laws, in my analogy to physics, and software APIs is that there is only one physical world with a limited set of natural laws that describe it. With software engineering we create our own new universes everyday, but they are common universes for us all to share.

m1sta_ 7y ago
It needs to be its own unique class of IP. The intersection between industrial design, spare parts, and patents deal with some similar issues.
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  You can’t copyright an invention, as another commenter here has said.
  - m1sta_ 7y ago

trashface 7y ago

Thinking cynically, could an Oracle win increase demand for programmers? Companies may need to hire lots of extra programmers to audit what they have, and possibly rewrite or make trivial and mechanical API changes to avoid infringement. Sort of like the broken window theory from economics - break ALL the windows. I mean, API-copyright plumbing wouldn't be my first choice of work, but might make for a decent part time remote job while I spent most of my energy on something else that is actually useful.

onyva 7y ago

When this started Oracle was the evil one. Now we have your run of the mill predatory capitalism vs a particularly nasty and dangerous form of surveillance capitalism, which makes oracle look harmless.

fmakunbound 7y ago

Anyone else worried about the technical illiterate deciding this one?

Skgqie1 7y ago

Assuming Oracle wins, what would be necessary to differentiate an implementation from their owned interfaces? For example, would a method named FuckOracle_min be different enough to not run afoul - or is it the plain text description of the API that covers what does / doesn't constitute infringement?

jhanschoo 7y ago

In the case that Oracle wins solely on Structure, Sequence, and Organization, I don't see how such a ruling immediately spells doom for competitors trying to interoperate. Competitors can still publish a functionally identical but differently organized API, then provide a competitor2us.sh script to statically change references to their own API. Sure, the friction is higher, but not unreasonable.

alok-g 7y ago
Wow. This makes sense.

jonathonadler 7y ago

This is an interesting comparison to Dataflex vs. Powerflex: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/SydLRev/1998/12.html In this case, the use of “copied” reserved words was at the heart of it. I never understood why reserved words could be protected.

runn1ng 7y ago

I am mostly surprised this is still ongoing... isn’t it going for around 10 years already?

aiCeivi9 7y ago
SCO took even longer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes . It stops only when one side can no longer pay the lawyers :/.

didibus 7y ago

I can't help and wonder though, as much as I think it would be madness for APIs to be copyrighted, including a language's standard library. Would I just have more job opportunities as a dev if it was? Since much more work would be needed to provide alternative solutions to all these?

fahrixds 7y ago

true.

aurizon 7y ago

My mechanic says he can not service my car because the nut to open the hood latch has a copyrighted shape and the owner of the copyright on that shape advised me not to use my adjustable wrench or he would sue, but I could rent his crescent wrench each time I want to service may car, or I could keep the creascent wrench at home and the installed counter on the wrench would talk to his billing software and he would send an invoice every month... In 3 words or less, compare and contrast this to the Google-Oracle copyright fiasco...

pfdietz 7y ago

One effect of a ruling that APIs cannot be copyrighted would be to make it more likely they can be subject to patent protection. That's probably better, but don't be surprised if we see API patents.

ascotan 7y ago

If the supreme court rules in favor of Oracle here, you can expect trolls to start suing small businesses for copyright infringement based off of old software APIs. I think Americans should be encouraging tech startups not laying legal minefields for them.

jl6 7y ago

What’s the current status, today, right now, of the copyrightability of APIs? Does the Federal Circuit decision stand because it hasn’t yet been overruled or is it not yet in force because it’s being appealed?

microcolonel 7y ago

What amazes me most is that Oracle has been able to find any expert witness willing to put his name to this frivolous case.

redm 7y ago

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but Google created this problem because they didn't want to pay Oracle for commercial use of Java. This isn't always a problem. When Compaq did the same thing to create the first IBM compatible PC's, they did so very carefully, ensuring there was no one working on the team with prior knowledge. I don't believe Google did the same thing and that's where my problem is. If they can look through Oracle's code, and just re-write it slightly to do the same thing to avoid commercial licensing, that doesn't help Open Source, it hurts it.

greatjack613 7y ago

Was wondering would it be possible to get a petition on change.org started in googles favor? I think we need the court to understand the ramifcations of oracles arguements. No more openjdk, etc.

jhanschoo 7y ago

Important note: The SC has already denied to hear on whether APIs' SSOs are copyrightable, suggesting that it agrees with the Fed. Cir. opinion that they are. This hearing is about Google's Fair Use defense.... and I don't expect Google to win on fair use unless the SC intends to really break new ground on fair use analyses.

drallison 7y ago

If the future of computer programming is important to you, read the briefing calling for cert in this case. A timeline and references can be found at http://www.project-disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/ http://www.project-disco.org/oracle-v-google-case/ . For a programmer, the weight of the evidence against copyright for APIs is conclusive as presented in the briefing. Unfortunately, there are no programmers on the Supreme Court; while Judge Alsop did learn Java Programming so he could understand the issues,the Circuit Judges who reviewed Alsop's decision were not so dedicated.