> All code is "functional" and yet creative and copyrighted. People used to say that about logos too, but Sega v. Accolade put a stop to a particular misuse of

> All code is "functional" and yet creative and copyrighted. People used to say that about logos too, but Sega v. Accolade put a stop to a particular misuse of copyright in a way that I believe is similar to what Oracle is trying to achieve here. As for whether the copy was meant to be "compatible" we both know that's a huge can of worms, it was meant to make source usable with minimal porting effort (i.e. on the level of the old "write once, run everywhere" Sun once touted Java via) rather than meet the particular Java compatibility test scheme that existed. Also, there are always going to be compatibility bugs between versions, but I don't see that as having any bearing on this being a fair use and neither did either jury who found fair use... > This case is not about copyrighting the concept of an interface, but of the copyright of about 11KLOC The bulk of which is merely an interface. > I am saying that the statement that this case is about "copyrighting APIs" in general is biased, because the case here is peculiar and extreme. It is peculiar, but I strongly feel that it would go in the wrong direction. I believe the original ruling in Alsup's court was correct, if somewhat novel. > In Java, declaring code specifies complex class resolution, loading and initialization algorithms. That's not what I'm asking to prove and that, again, is just a matter of finding the right code and putting the right values in place (i.e. an interface). Java doesn't give a damn what's implemented in the JAR file's classes, it just knows that it was asked to find the code there with a specific class name and pass it specific values that were named. The actual bytecode is nothing alike, so the "copying" is just to let compilers find the right code to link up, trying to make good on Sun's old write once, run everywhere promise. So it's just an interface to find the right code and feed it values.