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But this case isn’t about consuming or interacting with an API, it’s about implementing an API. So less writing a compiler targeting a CPU instruction set and m

But this case isn’t about consuming or interacting with an API, it’s about implementing an API. So less writing a compiler targeting a CPU instruction set and more building a CPU based on someone else’s instruction set. I’ve always found it strange that other programmers are so dismissive of APIs as copyrightable work. They’re they hard part! Building APIs requires creativity and careful thought. If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning?

wtallis 7y ago
> If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning? The reasoning is quite simple and obvious: We have long-standing statutory and case law that defines specifically what is or isn't eligible for copyright protection, or patents, or trademarks. Your gut feelings about whether your API deserves protection because of how much effort you put into it are completely irrelevant to that legal framework.
- Spivak 7y ago
  Seems like circular reasoning to say that the things that can be copyrighted are the things that we have agreed can be copyrighted. Seems like if the courts decide that APIs are copyrightable then you would be fine with it since it would be part of that case law. There was a time when software didn’t have copyright protection. Somebody had to make the first move.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    It's not circular reasoning. The flow is clear: the Constitution gives Congress the power to make copyright law, Congress passed laws doing so, and the courts work out the details at the margins for stuff Congress didn't make explicit. Software is very much explicitly mentioned by the copyright laws that have been passed by Congress, so there's no reasonable doubt about the legal foundation there. API copyright isn't explicitly supported by statutory law, so for the courts to affirm API copyright on their own, they need to provide a convincing derivation of its existence as implicitly covered by existing statute. I doubt they can do so, and they obviously cannot do so without overturning a lot of previous precedent. And all of the above is about the legal, technical questions about what the law is. The public policy question of what the law should be is a different matter entirely, and opinions about that generally should be addressed to Congress, not the Supreme Court.
    - sterileopinions 7y ago
      >It's not circular reasoning. It most definitely is.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    APIs are functional, not artistic. They belong in the domain of patent law, not copyright.
    - mongol 7y ago
      Copyright does not only cover artistic works. APIs are a form of contracts and contracts are copyrightable.
      - monocasa 7y ago
        APIs aren't a type of contract in the legal sense.
    - speedplane 7y ago
      > APIs are functional, not artistic. They belong in the domain of patent law, not copyright. I think you're mixing up different types of intellectual property: - Trademarks are intended to identify a source. Trademarks cannot be functional, they have to be descriptive. - Copyright must express a creative idea. That idea can be artistic, or functional. Computer code and APIs can be copyrighted (as they most often are), but they can also be patented. - Patents cover inventions with some utility. One can definitely patent a piece of art if it provides some utility. It's not uncommon for companies to throw all three at whatever they are cooking up.
macspoofing 7y ago
>They’re they hard part Are they though? Implementors aren't piggybacking on APIs because they can't come up with anything better, they can ... easily. They are implementing those APIs because they want compiled Java programs to run on their runtime.
- Spivak 7y ago
  This case is more nuanced than that. Google is not copying the Java API for interoperability with existing Java programs — they’re copying the Java API to provide a familiar environment for Java developers. I agree the former ought to be fair use but the latter I’m less sure of.
  - wtallis 7y ago
    Aren't you unfairly privileging the idea of a Java program over that of a Java library? A wholly-packaged Java program may not have interoperability with Android, but lots of libraries don't have that problem. There are plenty of copyrighted works written in Java that are fully compatible with Android.
    - Spivak 7y ago
      I don’t disagree at all, but the question isn’t “are there pieces of existing software that run on both” but “is that the reason that Google copied the API or is it a side effect?”
      - wtallis 7y ago
        The existence of those works that run on both means you really need to start coughing up evidence for your repeated assertion that Google's motives were strictly about something else.
      - gpm 7y ago
        I'd argue that that is the wrong question, motive doesn't come into play in this law (specifically: The merger doctrine). You should rather be asking the hypothetical version. If someone tried to make a second system that could run the software, would they have had to copy the API? If so the API is not copyrightable.
gpm 7y ago
The short answer is: I think the law clearly supports the idea that copyright does not extend to APIs, and if copyright did extend to APIs it would be disastrous for the American software industry, and given America's large influence the world at large. The long version of both of those is made much better than I could hope to make it in the various briefs. You can find them all here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-956.html https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do... Google's brief probably provides the best version of the legal arguments, that being their job. Read the text under the heading "The Federal Circuit erred in holding that the Java API declarations were copyrightable." on pages 16 to 21 and the text under "This Court Should Grant Review To Decide Whether, As The Jury Found, Petitioner’s Use Of A Software Interface In The Context Of Creating A New Computer Program Constitutes Fair Use" on pages 21 to 29. I personally find the merger doctrine arguments particularly convincing, starting on page 17. Here's a direct link https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/81532/20190124110509177_Google%20cert%20petition.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/81532/20190... As for why it would be disastrous for the software industry, I particularly like this amicus brief, and would suggest reading section 2. It was written by 78 particularly famous computer scientists, including Steve Wozniak, Guido van Rossum, Ken Thompson, Bjarne Stroustrup, Martin Odersky, Peter Norvig, Brian Kernighan, and Alan Kay. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190225134131839_18-956_Oracle_v__Google_Computer_Scientists_Amicus_Motion_Brief_FILE.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190... Here's an except, where one of the programmers for Java says that while he was creating Java's standard libraries he copied APIs in the same way ("Amicus" in this context means one of the computer scientists who wrote this brief to help better inform the court) > Sun reimplemented existing APIs for Java. Java reimplemented C’s math API,which includes methods for calculating a variety of mathematical functions. While at Sun, amicus Joshua Bloch oversaw Sun’s reimplementation of the Perl programming language’s regular expression API for Java, which allows sophisticated text searches and alterations. Oracle’s attempt to copyright Java’s API and hold Google liable for infringement of the resulting java.util.regex API ignores Java’s own history of API reimplementation. Here's an excerpt about an API you are probably familiar with, which hopefully underlies just how bad a compatability nightmare this ruling will create > In 1983, the Berkeley Systems Research Group released the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) sockets API. Sockets control the endpoints for any communication over the Internet. Because the BSD sockets API was not copyrighted, it became widely adopted: Every major operating system reimplemented it to enable Internet communication. Thus, programmers can write standardized software compatible across computers to manage Internet connectivity. But really, read the whole of section 2.
judge2020 7y ago
Designing APIs != Building APIs. Saying Oracle can copyright the Java APIs is like saying you can copyright the HTML5 specification, making it so the authors are the only ones who can implement HTML5.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning? Copyright is the thing that applies to works of authorship, like short stories and music. You can't copyright a fuel pump for a jet engine. You can't copyright function. That's patents, not copyright. Software is somewhat unusual in that it's at the same time a work of authorship (code, copyrightable), and a set instructions for a machine to interpret (functional), and pure mathematics (facts about the universe, not subject to patent or copyright). But an API is at the intersection of the functional part and the factual part. What distinguishes a literary work from a fact is that the literary work leaves room for creative expression. A copyright on an expression of a fact isn't a copyright on the fact itself, because someone else doesn't have to use your expression. They can create their own expression, so you having a copyright over your expression doesn't exclude them from using or conveying the same factual information. When someone creates an implementation of an API, the API itself is a fact about how to interact with implementations of that API. There isn't any other way to interact with other implementations, so there is no room for creative expression in that aspect of a compatible implementation, so there is nothing there to copyright. You have to use the same API for entirely functional reasons or it's not compatible. And you can't copyright function.
- wbillingsley 7y ago
  But is that enough? Let's use a deliberately extreme example to test its limits: Skyrim mods. Does the presence of third party Skyrim mods mean that everything they refer to is an API and therefore non-copyright? The game geometry, maps, characters and events are facts about Skyrim that those mods need to operate. Does this therefore imply that a hypothetical person could sell their own re-implementation of Skyrim on the grounds that all those things (characters, missions, events, geometry, models, etc) were function required for mods to continue to operate? Or, to stretch it in a different direction, let's suppose I write some functions. If you write some functions that call them, presumably my API is therefore functionality and non-copyright? But what about if you don't call them, and only I happen to write calling code. It's still an API, it's still functionality required for other code to operate (my own), so is it still non-copyright? What about whether I mark my code public? If I omit "public" from the same function definitions so they can't be called externally do the definitions become artistic and copyright? If so then is the artistry in the lack of a public keyword? If not then is any code structure copyright - it's all functionality that calling functions requires to operate. Yes, that's deliberately playing logic games and taking things to extremes to see if there's a clear line in the sand. It's going to be interesting to see what the court determines, anyway, because it seems like a big question.
curun1r 7y ago
I think the answer lies in compatibility and lock-in. Software and even hardware gets built against APIs. If APIs are protectable through copyright and a single entity can control who can and cannot implement that API as a provider, then everyone who has built software that consumes the API will be locked into doing business with a single company or its approved providers. As software engineers, most of us value the ability to compete and be interoperable and we recognized APIs becoming protected as enabling a new era of walled gardens and barriers to creating competing products. We cheered for Compaq when they reverse engineered the IBM PC and started selling computers that could run software built for the IBM. We cheered Linux when it created a free alternative to the proprietary Unix interface. We cheered WINE when it made Windows APIs available under Linux. This kind of interoperability gives the rest of us the ability to reuse our own software without being beholden to the companies that created the original target platform. Incidentally, there's a slight distinction in wording around API copyrights. I don't think there's a doubt that they can be copyrighted. Anything that is written down, recorded or filmed automatically receives copyright protection. The interesting question is whether there is a fair use exemption for interoperability. I think it would be obviously wrong if Google had taken Java and its APIs, renamed it Gava and then started pushing developers to write Gava software instead of Java. But they didn't, they just made Java be able to run on a new class of devices. If all you're doing is helping to ensure that existing code written by other developers can work with your product, that's a benefit for those developers too as well as the end users that buy and run the software.
- jhanschoo 7y ago
  Regarding the point in the first paragraph: In that case, that is a legislative issue. A judiciary is not empowered to be lenient in their judgment on copyright infringement because of compatibility and lock-in.
  - gpm 7y ago
    Case law strongly disagrees with you on this point. Most relevant to this case is the merger doctrine. Ideas that can be expressed in only a small number of ways are not copyrightable. Even more on point to your comment is the concept of copyright misuse. If you try to use your copyright (a government granted temporary monopoly on the reproduction of your work) to gain monopolies on other things you can not only lose the infringement case but in extreme cases even lose the copyright entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...
mongol 7y ago
I agree. I don't think APIs should be copyrightable, but in a world where some little piece of a tune reminds of another tune and therefore is deemed infringing on copyright.. There is similar intellectual effort behind both. We will see what happens but I can see the argument why it should be copyrightable from a pure "intellectual property is property" standpoint. But I also think that it is better for the world with much less copyright protection in general.

wtallis 7y ago

> If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning? The reasoning is quite simple and obvious: We have long-standing statutory and case law that defines specifically what is or isn't eligible for copyright protection, or patents, or trademarks. Your gut feelings about whether your API deserves protection because of how much effort you put into it are completely irrelevant to that legal framework.

Spivak 7y ago
Seems like circular reasoning to say that the things that can be copyrighted are the things that we have agreed can be copyrighted. Seems like if the courts decide that APIs are copyrightable then you would be fine with it since it would be part of that case law. There was a time when software didn’t have copyright protection. Somebody had to make the first move.
- wtallis 7y ago
  It's not circular reasoning. The flow is clear: the Constitution gives Congress the power to make copyright law, Congress passed laws doing so, and the courts work out the details at the margins for stuff Congress didn't make explicit. Software is very much explicitly mentioned by the copyright laws that have been passed by Congress, so there's no reasonable doubt about the legal foundation there. API copyright isn't explicitly supported by statutory law, so for the courts to affirm API copyright on their own, they need to provide a convincing derivation of its existence as implicitly covered by existing statute. I doubt they can do so, and they obviously cannot do so without overturning a lot of previous precedent. And all of the above is about the legal, technical questions about what the law is. The public policy question of what the law should be is a different matter entirely, and opinions about that generally should be addressed to Congress, not the Supreme Court.
  - sterileopinions 7y ago
    >It's not circular reasoning. It most definitely is.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  APIs are functional, not artistic. They belong in the domain of patent law, not copyright.
  - mongol 7y ago
    Copyright does not only cover artistic works. APIs are a form of contracts and contracts are copyrightable.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      APIs aren't a type of contract in the legal sense.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > APIs are functional, not artistic. They belong in the domain of patent law, not copyright. I think you're mixing up different types of intellectual property: - Trademarks are intended to identify a source. Trademarks cannot be functional, they have to be descriptive. - Copyright must express a creative idea. That idea can be artistic, or functional. Computer code and APIs can be copyrighted (as they most often are), but they can also be patented. - Patents cover inventions with some utility. One can definitely patent a piece of art if it provides some utility. It's not uncommon for companies to throw all three at whatever they are cooking up.

macspoofing 7y ago

>They’re they hard part Are they though? Implementors aren't piggybacking on APIs because they can't come up with anything better, they can ... easily. They are implementing those APIs because they want compiled Java programs to run on their runtime.

Spivak 7y ago
This case is more nuanced than that. Google is not copying the Java API for interoperability with existing Java programs — they’re copying the Java API to provide a familiar environment for Java developers. I agree the former ought to be fair use but the latter I’m less sure of.
- wtallis 7y ago
  Aren't you unfairly privileging the idea of a Java program over that of a Java library? A wholly-packaged Java program may not have interoperability with Android, but lots of libraries don't have that problem. There are plenty of copyrighted works written in Java that are fully compatible with Android.
  - Spivak 7y ago
    I don’t disagree at all, but the question isn’t “are there pieces of existing software that run on both” but “is that the reason that Google copied the API or is it a side effect?”
    - wtallis 7y ago
      The existence of those works that run on both means you really need to start coughing up evidence for your repeated assertion that Google's motives were strictly about something else.
    - gpm 7y ago
      I'd argue that that is the wrong question, motive doesn't come into play in this law (specifically: The merger doctrine). You should rather be asking the hypothetical version. If someone tried to make a second system that could run the software, would they have had to copy the API? If so the API is not copyrightable.

gpm 7y ago

The short answer is: I think the law clearly supports the idea that copyright does not extend to APIs, and if copyright did extend to APIs it would be disastrous for the American software industry, and given America's large influence the world at large. The long version of both of those is made much better than I could hope to make it in the various briefs. You can find them all here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-956.html https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do... Google's brief probably provides the best version of the legal arguments, that being their job. Read the text under the heading "The Federal Circuit erred in holding that the Java API declarations were copyrightable." on pages 16 to 21 and the text under "This Court Should Grant Review To Decide Whether, As The Jury Found, Petitioner’s Use Of A Software Interface In The Context Of Creating A New Computer Program Constitutes Fair Use" on pages 21 to 29. I personally find the merger doctrine arguments particularly convincing, starting on page 17. Here's a direct link https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/81532/20190124110509177_Google%20cert%20petition.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/81532/20190... As for why it would be disastrous for the software industry, I particularly like this amicus brief, and would suggest reading section 2. It was written by 78 particularly famous computer scientists, including Steve Wozniak, Guido van Rossum, Ken Thompson, Bjarne Stroustrup, Martin Odersky, Peter Norvig, Brian Kernighan, and Alan Kay. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190225134131839_18-956_Oracle_v__Google_Computer_Scientists_Amicus_Motion_Brief_FILE.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-956/89487/20190... Here's an except, where one of the programmers for Java says that while he was creating Java's standard libraries he copied APIs in the same way ("Amicus" in this context means one of the computer scientists who wrote this brief to help better inform the court) > Sun reimplemented existing APIs for Java. Java reimplemented C’s math API,which includes methods for calculating a variety of mathematical functions. While at Sun, amicus Joshua Bloch oversaw Sun’s reimplementation of the Perl programming language’s regular expression API for Java, which allows sophisticated text searches and alterations. Oracle’s attempt to copyright Java’s API and hold Google liable for infringement of the resulting java.util.regex API ignores Java’s own history of API reimplementation. Here's an excerpt about an API you are probably familiar with, which hopefully underlies just how bad a compatability nightmare this ruling will create > In 1983, the Berkeley Systems Research Group released the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) sockets API. Sockets control the endpoints for any communication over the Internet. Because the BSD sockets API was not copyrighted, it became widely adopted: Every major operating system reimplemented it to enable Internet communication. Thus, programmers can write standardized software compatible across computers to manage Internet connectivity. But really, read the whole of section 2.

judge2020 7y ago

Designing APIs != Building APIs. Saying Oracle can copyright the Java APIs is like saying you can copyright the HTML5 specification, making it so the authors are the only ones who can implement HTML5.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> If you support the idea that APIs can’t be copyrighted, and ignoring the evilness of Oracle and Google, what’s your reasoning? Copyright is the thing that applies to works of authorship, like short stories and music. You can't copyright a fuel pump for a jet engine. You can't copyright function. That's patents, not copyright. Software is somewhat unusual in that it's at the same time a work of authorship (code, copyrightable), and a set instructions for a machine to interpret (functional), and pure mathematics (facts about the universe, not subject to patent or copyright). But an API is at the intersection of the functional part and the factual part. What distinguishes a literary work from a fact is that the literary work leaves room for creative expression. A copyright on an expression of a fact isn't a copyright on the fact itself, because someone else doesn't have to use your expression. They can create their own expression, so you having a copyright over your expression doesn't exclude them from using or conveying the same factual information. When someone creates an implementation of an API, the API itself is a fact about how to interact with implementations of that API. There isn't any other way to interact with other implementations, so there is no room for creative expression in that aspect of a compatible implementation, so there is nothing there to copyright. You have to use the same API for entirely functional reasons or it's not compatible. And you can't copyright function.

wbillingsley 7y ago
But is that enough? Let's use a deliberately extreme example to test its limits: Skyrim mods. Does the presence of third party Skyrim mods mean that everything they refer to is an API and therefore non-copyright? The game geometry, maps, characters and events are facts about Skyrim that those mods need to operate. Does this therefore imply that a hypothetical person could sell their own re-implementation of Skyrim on the grounds that all those things (characters, missions, events, geometry, models, etc) were function required for mods to continue to operate? Or, to stretch it in a different direction, let's suppose I write some functions. If you write some functions that call them, presumably my API is therefore functionality and non-copyright? But what about if you don't call them, and only I happen to write calling code. It's still an API, it's still functionality required for other code to operate (my own), so is it still non-copyright? What about whether I mark my code public? If I omit "public" from the same function definitions so they can't be called externally do the definitions become artistic and copyright? If so then is the artistry in the lack of a public keyword? If not then is any code structure copyright - it's all functionality that calling functions requires to operate. Yes, that's deliberately playing logic games and taking things to extremes to see if there's a clear line in the sand. It's going to be interesting to see what the court determines, anyway, because it seems like a big question.

curun1r 7y ago

I think the answer lies in compatibility and lock-in. Software and even hardware gets built against APIs. If APIs are protectable through copyright and a single entity can control who can and cannot implement that API as a provider, then everyone who has built software that consumes the API will be locked into doing business with a single company or its approved providers. As software engineers, most of us value the ability to compete and be interoperable and we recognized APIs becoming protected as enabling a new era of walled gardens and barriers to creating competing products. We cheered for Compaq when they reverse engineered the IBM PC and started selling computers that could run software built for the IBM. We cheered Linux when it created a free alternative to the proprietary Unix interface. We cheered WINE when it made Windows APIs available under Linux. This kind of interoperability gives the rest of us the ability to reuse our own software without being beholden to the companies that created the original target platform. Incidentally, there's a slight distinction in wording around API copyrights. I don't think there's a doubt that they can be copyrighted. Anything that is written down, recorded or filmed automatically receives copyright protection. The interesting question is whether there is a fair use exemption for interoperability. I think it would be obviously wrong if Google had taken Java and its APIs, renamed it Gava and then started pushing developers to write Gava software instead of Java. But they didn't, they just made Java be able to run on a new class of devices. If all you're doing is helping to ensure that existing code written by other developers can work with your product, that's a benefit for those developers too as well as the end users that buy and run the software.

jhanschoo 7y ago
Regarding the point in the first paragraph: In that case, that is a legislative issue. A judiciary is not empowered to be lenient in their judgment on copyright infringement because of compatibility and lock-in.
- gpm 7y ago
  Case law strongly disagrees with you on this point. Most relevant to this case is the merger doctrine. Ideas that can be expressed in only a small number of ways are not copyrightable. Even more on point to your comment is the concept of copyright misuse. If you try to use your copyright (a government granted temporary monopoly on the reproduction of your work) to gain monopolies on other things you can not only lose the infringement case but in extreme cases even lose the copyright entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_misuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distinction#Merger_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_distin...

mongol 7y ago

I agree. I don't think APIs should be copyrightable, but in a world where some little piece of a tune reminds of another tune and therefore is deemed infringing on copyright.. There is similar intellectual effort behind both. We will see what happens but I can see the argument why it should be copyrightable from a pure "intellectual property is property" standpoint. But I also think that it is better for the world with much less copyright protection in general.