3 ms·

It probably wouldn't be that bad: there's already copyright doctrines for situations where something is so commonly used that it can't be protected, or where th

It probably wouldn't be that bad: there's already copyright doctrines for situations where something is so commonly used that it can't be protected, or where there's only one reasonable way to express a particular idea. Plus, copyright protection is usually not extended to extremely short phrases or snippets of text, so even in an "APIs are copyrightable" world, "parse(string)" is probably OK. (Of course, I only said probably, which is part of the problem.) The Oracle argument (and as things currently stand in their case, the accepted argument) is basically that the API taken as a whole can be protected even if each individual function name can't, so you could protect the "Java API" but not "compare(a, b)". The idea of copyright arising from "structure, sequence and organization" is well established in the computing context as well as others (for example, you can hold copyright in a compilation even if the individual things being compiled aren't themselves copyrightable). Still, API copyright would lead to all sorts of uncertainty at least at first, and certainly puts compatible implementations or reimplementations in the crosshairs, so I'd really prefer an Oracle loss here.

_hl_ 6y ago
> The Oracle argument (and as things currently stand in their case, the accepted argument) is basically that the API taken as a whole can be protected even if each individual function name can't And let's be honest, that does make some sense. We've all designed APIs that were particularly elegant and that we were proud of as something almost artistically beautiful. Surely APIs as a whole can constitute some kind of intellectual property. I'm not sure if copyright is the right way to protect APIs, mostly because copyright lasts for an absolute eternity in software engineering timeframes. But I do think that there ought to be some protection against others copying an API (unless you license it e.g. as open-source), although interfacing with an API should always be allowed.
- umvi 6y ago
  Are other types of interfaces copyrightable? I think that should be what sets the precedent. For example, would I be able to create an airplane with the same cockpit layout (same button/lever positionings, etc) as Boeing so that pilots don't have to learn a completely different layout to fly Umvi brand planes?

_hl_ 6y ago

> The Oracle argument (and as things currently stand in their case, the accepted argument) is basically that the API taken as a whole can be protected even if each individual function name can't And let's be honest, that does make some sense. We've all designed APIs that were particularly elegant and that we were proud of as something almost artistically beautiful. Surely APIs as a whole can constitute some kind of intellectual property. I'm not sure if copyright is the right way to protect APIs, mostly because copyright lasts for an absolute eternity in software engineering timeframes. But I do think that there ought to be some protection against others copying an API (unless you license it e.g. as open-source), although interfacing with an API should always be allowed.

umvi 6y ago
Are other types of interfaces copyrightable? I think that should be what sets the precedent. For example, would I be able to create an airplane with the same cockpit layout (same button/lever positionings, etc) as Boeing so that pilots don't have to learn a completely different layout to fly Umvi brand planes?