> 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 e

> 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.