4 ms·

Copyright is not like trademark. Amazon can choose to enforce it selectively, and it should not influence any specific case.

Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
However if they choose not to defend it they may be opening themselves up to an “implied licence” defence from others in the future. (Though they could then revoke their license but anything created up to that point may be considered as under that implied license if the implied license defence plays off. Think of it a bit like changing from an open source license to one that’s not, you would still be allowed to work with the older open source version if you wanted) What would be a better option (IMO) then just not enforcing your rights would be to get an nominal fee from the entities you like and in return grant them a favourable license. (Not a lawyer, go ask your own lawyer if you want specific legal advice)
- jcims 7y ago
  They are going to want the same freedom to copy service interfaces of successful customers and competitors. Defending this vigorously would be counterproductive in that regard. Besides, the innovation in S3 isn’t the API, and I don’t see what Amazon has to fear from Oracle’s implementation of a global scale object store.
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    I'm not suggesting Amazon would or even should defend their API from Oracle. Just making the counter argument that while not defending your copyrights doesn't lead to a point where you can lose your copyright on something (Which can happen with trademarks) but purposely not defending them can lead to a point where you have inadvertently created an implied license causing headaches later down the road if you did decide to defend them at a later date. For an example, lets just say for the sake of argument Amazon did decide to defend their API from Oracle's implementation and take action. Oracle could use as a defence (But prob not their only line of defense) that "That Internet Archive, LeoFS, Riak CS, Minio, cloudian and others all have S3-Like API's. Amazon must be aware that these products exist and by allowing such products to exist without defending their rights (what ever they are) to the API they allowed an implied license for the API to be created thus Oracle's implementation is just another implementation of that implied license. A "Workaround" to such could be taking lets say Internet Archive to one side and saying "Hey, we like what you do, but we have a copyright on that API you are using. Pay us $1 and we will grant you a license to use that API.". Personally I dislike the idea of enforcing copyrights on an API (Sure, enforce them code behind that API, unless you wish to give that away) and feel that the products using them should stand on their own.
- CrazyStat 7y ago
  I'm not aware of any legal doctrine [in the US] of implied license based on a copyright holder failing to defend their copyright. Can you give a citation for that? Implied license generally applies to situations where a reasonable person would believe they have a license even though one has not been explicitly granted. For example, if I pay you for the use of a photograph you took, even without a written contract granting me ownership or a license, a court would hold that I have an implied license. Failing to defend IP can enable a laches defense, but that's quite different from an implied license.
  - Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
    > Can you give a citation for that? Off the top of my head (Which may not be a great example but the first one that sprung to mind) Field v. Google. > The Field court expanded the earlier doctrine to hold that implied license arises "where the copyright holder knows of the use and encourages it." Applying this two-pronged knowledge and encouragement test to the Field facts, the court found that the website owner was aware of the robots exclusion protocol mechanisms for communicating with the Googlebot, and that by not using them, he essentially encouraged the Googlebot to index his content.
    - CrazyStat 7y ago
      I think that's a stretch. Field did a lot more than just fail to defend his copyright: > Field created a robots.txt file for his site and set the permissions within this file to allow all robots to visit and index all of the pages on the site. [...] Field created the robots.txt file because he wanted search engines to visit his site and include the site within their search results. and (regarding meta-tags): > Field concedes he was aware of these industry standard mechanisms, and knew that the presence of a “no archive” meta-tag on the pages of his Web site would have informed Google not to display “Cached” links to his pages. Despite this knowledge, Field chose not to include the no-archive meta-tag on the pages of his site. He did so, knowing that Google would interpret the absence of the meta-tag as permission to allow access to the pages via “Cached” links. Thus, with knowledge of how Google would use the copyrighted works he placed on those pages, and with knowledge that he could prevent such use, Field instead made a conscious decision to permit it. His conduct is reasonably interpreted as the grant of a license to Google for that use. Field was trying to get his site indexed and cached (so that he could sue Google), and Google indexed and cached it. The court ruled that Field's actions were active encouragement and implied the grant of a license to do the thing he wanted Google to do.

Crosseye_Jack 7y ago

However if they choose not to defend it they may be opening themselves up to an “implied licence” defence from others in the future. (Though they could then revoke their license but anything created up to that point may be considered as under that implied license if the implied license defence plays off. Think of it a bit like changing from an open source license to one that’s not, you would still be allowed to work with the older open source version if you wanted) What would be a better option (IMO) then just not enforcing your rights would be to get an nominal fee from the entities you like and in return grant them a favourable license. (Not a lawyer, go ask your own lawyer if you want specific legal advice)

jcims 7y ago
They are going to want the same freedom to copy service interfaces of successful customers and competitors. Defending this vigorously would be counterproductive in that regard. Besides, the innovation in S3 isn’t the API, and I don’t see what Amazon has to fear from Oracle’s implementation of a global scale object store.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  I'm not suggesting Amazon would or even should defend their API from Oracle. Just making the counter argument that while not defending your copyrights doesn't lead to a point where you can lose your copyright on something (Which can happen with trademarks) but purposely not defending them can lead to a point where you have inadvertently created an implied license causing headaches later down the road if you did decide to defend them at a later date. For an example, lets just say for the sake of argument Amazon did decide to defend their API from Oracle's implementation and take action. Oracle could use as a defence (But prob not their only line of defense) that "That Internet Archive, LeoFS, Riak CS, Minio, cloudian and others all have S3-Like API's. Amazon must be aware that these products exist and by allowing such products to exist without defending their rights (what ever they are) to the API they allowed an implied license for the API to be created thus Oracle's implementation is just another implementation of that implied license. A "Workaround" to such could be taking lets say Internet Archive to one side and saying "Hey, we like what you do, but we have a copyright on that API you are using. Pay us $1 and we will grant you a license to use that API.". Personally I dislike the idea of enforcing copyrights on an API (Sure, enforce them code behind that API, unless you wish to give that away) and feel that the products using them should stand on their own.
CrazyStat 7y ago
I'm not aware of any legal doctrine [in the US] of implied license based on a copyright holder failing to defend their copyright. Can you give a citation for that? Implied license generally applies to situations where a reasonable person would believe they have a license even though one has not been explicitly granted. For example, if I pay you for the use of a photograph you took, even without a written contract granting me ownership or a license, a court would hold that I have an implied license. Failing to defend IP can enable a laches defense, but that's quite different from an implied license.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  > Can you give a citation for that? Off the top of my head (Which may not be a great example but the first one that sprung to mind) Field v. Google. > The Field court expanded the earlier doctrine to hold that implied license arises "where the copyright holder knows of the use and encourages it." Applying this two-pronged knowledge and encouragement test to the Field facts, the court found that the website owner was aware of the robots exclusion protocol mechanisms for communicating with the Googlebot, and that by not using them, he essentially encouraged the Googlebot to index his content.
  - CrazyStat 7y ago
    I think that's a stretch. Field did a lot more than just fail to defend his copyright: > Field created a robots.txt file for his site and set the permissions within this file to allow all robots to visit and index all of the pages on the site. [...] Field created the robots.txt file because he wanted search engines to visit his site and include the site within their search results. and (regarding meta-tags): > Field concedes he was aware of these industry standard mechanisms, and knew that the presence of a “no archive” meta-tag on the pages of his Web site would have informed Google not to display “Cached” links to his pages. Despite this knowledge, Field chose not to include the no-archive meta-tag on the pages of his site. He did so, knowing that Google would interpret the absence of the meta-tag as permission to allow access to the pages via “Cached” links. Thus, with knowledge of how Google would use the copyrighted works he placed on those pages, and with knowledge that he could prevent such use, Field instead made a conscious decision to permit it. His conduct is reasonably interpreted as the grant of a license to Google for that use. Field was trying to get his site indexed and cached (so that he could sue Google), and Google indexed and cached it. The court ruled that Field's actions were active encouragement and implied the grant of a license to do the thing he wanted Google to do.