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> It's a bit like copyrighting an API and then everyone else has to rename their math.min and math.max functions. Well, that's still up in the air, isn't it?

• monadic2 6y ago
  Which expression of the API is copyrighted? You can’t copyright an abstract concept—quite literally a meaningless idea. The documentation, the code, some kind of more formal expression of the exposed functionality? The distributed binary?
  • j-james 6y ago
    Re. Oracle vs Google, I believe Oracle's arguing it's the method names themselves, so a formal expression of the exposed functionality. These are methods like math.min and math.max. If your Java implementation doesn't have methods named math.min and math.max, regardless of how they're written, a whole lot of Java programs aren't going to work. This (in my opinion) falls into the "there's only a few [efficient] ways of making it work" category, and shouldn't be copyrightable. But I guess we'll see what happens once courts resume. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120531172522459 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120531172522459 (another, separate, point of contention in Oracle v. Google is the rangeCheck method, the code of which is identical in both implementations. but there's only so many ways to write a rangeCheck function...)