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Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google

• odyssey7 6y ago
  Justice Ginsburg was known as an authority on intellectual property rights, her voice is missed here.
  • jcranmer 6y ago
    And Ginsburg was famously known as a copyright maximalist.
• xiphias2 6y ago
  ,,Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster for Google'' I don't see how losing even a few billion dollars could be a disaster for Google at this point. They control most of the smart phones in the world, and that's worth much more than that amount of money (regardless of whether using Java was the right choice or not).
  • bradfitz 6y ago
    Few billion dollars, sure. Except that little Supreme Court decision on API copyrightability thing.
    • xiphias2 6y ago
      Why would that be so bad for Google? Can you please explain?
      • ffpip 6y ago
        Read the article. The case was bad for Google because their lawyer was bad. The case would be bad for software everywhere, because API copyright. (in future) You're mixing both and asking why it would be bad for Google
• flowerlad 6y ago
  This isn't just a disaster for Google. This is a disaster for competition in the tech industry and a disaster for consumers. If APIs can be copyrighted, what's next? File formats? On-the-wire protocols?
  • bismuthsalt 6y ago
    The unimpeachable approach for the software industry is to setup consortiums to define open standards for APIs, file formats and wire protocols, instead of relying on replicating the most popular proprietary ones. In fact there already exist such consortiums, for example https://www.w3.org https://www.w3.org, tasked with standardizing WWW, or https://www.cncf.io https://www.cncf.io for cloud computing standards.
  • yencabulator 6y ago
    Why not screw heads and threads, too? Apple wouldn't have to just use hard-to-find screwdrivers, they could just make a new screw shape, copyright the design, and then it'll be even harder to open their gadgets.
    • Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
      If that happens the bits will be on alibaba before the product is shipped to media.
    • rdsnsca 6y ago
      Actually screw heads are copyrighted, see : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Robertson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Robertson
      • sterwill 6y ago
        Copyrights are not patents, and your link asserts that the Robertson screw design is patented, not copyrighted. The Google vs. Oracle case is about copyrights.
• vlovich123 6y ago
  > This is a widespread practice in the software industry. Oracle, for example, re-implemented Amazon's S3 API so that customers who built software for Amazon's cloud platform could easily switch to Oracle's rival cloud platform. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    1. That would probably be considered fair use. 2. The amount of money Oracle would get back (and going forwards) in licensing fees for Android would probably dwarf most financial prospects from any API reimplementations that might be at risk.
    • dragonwriter 6y ago
      > That would probably be considered fair use. Because APIs have never before been considered copyrightable, unless Google wins on fair use in this case, we will have exactly zero on-point case law as to when an API reimplementation is fair use. Speculating on what would be considered fair use in API re-implementations in that case would be extremely speculative. > The amount of money Oracle would get back (and going forwards) in licensing fees for Android would probably dwarf most financial prospects from any API reimplementations that might be at risk. Maybe more than existing ones, but is it worth more than the entire strategy of using API reimplementation to stay in the game against Amazon, who is far and away ahead in cloud? Is losing that worth a parasitic claim on Android until Google replaces it with something not subject to that claim?
      • dodobirdlord 6y ago
        Google already switched Android over to OpenJDK in 2016, which they have an absolutely ironclad right to use without paying for. If Oracle does end up winning the payout will be for the period of 2008-2016 when Google was using their own home brewed Java implementation.
        • johncolanduoni 6y ago
• Aqueous 6y ago
  This might not just be a disaster for Google - it could be a disaster for software everywhere. If APIs become copyrightable, what happens to any open source software the implements a proprietary API? Supreme court judges just do not have the conceptual framework to properly adjudicate this. I don't think it's going to be possible to teach them the difference between interface and implementation within the parameters of these arguments. And beyond that the conservative majority is predisposed to treat everything as property. This is not going to end well.
  • rektide 6y ago
    > This might not just be a disaster for Google - it could be a disaster for software everywhere. This case has been a ticking time bomb, where the law is to decide whether ideas are patentable. Extremely scary news, seeing it go badly.
  • ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    APIs being copyrightable doesn't actually harm implementations of APIs that fall under fair use. (Fair use exemptions specifically apply to copyrighted things.) Interoperability is fair use. And things like something being non-commercial, such as a lot of open source software, is a major factor in determining whether or not usage is fair. Things like WINE or NES emulators or the like would fall very comfortably into fair use. It's nowhere near as world-ending as Google's public policy team would like you to believe. But given that Android is not fair use (it's not interoperable, they just wanted to glom on the popularity of the platform), it sucks for Google.
    • binarybits 6y ago
      Sorry, but this is not an accurate summary of the state of the law. Whether Android's implementation of Java was fair use is one of the questions the Supreme Court is considering. Google was absolutely trying to achieve interoperability with Java, so if Google loses it would make it more difficult for others to claim fair use. Fair use is complicated so others might succeed where Google failed, but a loss for Google would be bad news for interoperability generally.
• beervirus 6y ago
  It’s always dangerous to try to read the tea leaves based on what questions the Justices ask. We really don’t know yet what they’re going to do. Anyone who says otherwise is mostly just guessing.
• mathraki 6y ago
  Where are the expert witnesses in this case?? Do we really expect judges in their 60s and 70s to understand basics of coding in order to come to the right conclusion?? I put myself in their shoes, if I had never looked at a line of code I couldn't even start to imagine what an API vs real code is. I'd probably think it's some made up concept that Google is using to save money and circumvent the law.
  • ardy42 6y ago
    > Where are the expert witnesses in this case?? In the trial court.
    • gpm 6y ago
      And in the amici briefs (though they're not called expert witnesses there)
  • sjg007 6y ago
    To play devil's advocate: Architectural diagrams/design specifications for physical buildings are copyrightable. The implementation is obviously whatever the builder does. But in general, I think that is a pretty close analogy to APIs and implementation code. APIs also capture some sense of overall system design as well. So that may lend further credence to support copyrights.
    • jayd16 6y ago
      Design specs like door sizes, sink arrangements etc are not copyrighted. You're probably thinking about the reproduction of the design document, not adherence to the specifications that document describes.
      • sjg007 6y ago
        Those are common things which are excluded. So maybe Google has some argument on the parts... Oracle has an argument on the whole. https://www.aia.org/articles/26591-understanding-the-scope-of-architectural-cop https://www.aia.org/articles/26591-understanding-the-scope-o... To quote: """Under the AWCPA, an architectural work is statutorily defined as “the design of a building as embodied in any tangible medium of expression, including a building, architectural plans or drawings,” and “includes the overall form as well as the arrangement and composition of spaces and elements in the design, but does not include individual standard features,” such as common windows, doors, and other staple building components. Accordingly, per the definition, while individual standard features and architectural elements classifiable as ideas or concepts are not themselves copyrightable, an architect’s original combination or arrangement of such elements may be."""
• tasubotadas 6y ago
  >Oracle, for example, re-implemented Amazon's S3 API so that customers who built software for Amazon's cloud platform could easily switch to Oracle's rival cloud platform. So if Oracle wins here, they will get fuxxed by Amazon?
  • coldpie 6y ago
    Who knows. Does Amazon implement any of Oracle's APIs? This ruling is about to make the software patent mess look like a walk in the park.
    • buttersbrian 6y ago
      I would wholly expect Amazon to sue over S3 implementations by Oracle, IBM for SQL, etc. I would want the whole industry to target Oracle. Get their pound of flesh.
      • coldpie 6y ago
        And then Oracle sues Amazon and IBM back for implementing some API or other that they own through one of their billion acquisitions...
      • buttersbrian 6y ago
        Mutually Assured Destruction from the fallout of a terrible decision that forces the SC to re-evaluate (through another case etc) is better than letting something like this settle.
      • tmccrary55 6y ago
        Same but I think the problem is tech people don't buy Oracle products on purpose, suits do that.
        • buttersbrian 6y ago
          That's probably true. Honestly, companies shouldn't be worried about the FANG's, because they will create alliances and largely refrain from suing one another. It's the never-ending, death-by-a-thousand-cuts onslaught from trolls that will murder small/medium outfits. The east texas troll court is going to have a boom like it was 1840s California just to support all the litigation in our near future -- if this passes.
• actuator 6y ago
  > To re-implement Java, Google needed to copy the names and argument types of functions like java.lang.Math.max. If there are "copying" examples like this in the case, I am surprised it wasn't thrown out way earlier.
• SloopJon 6y ago
  I saw one question from Gorsuch quoted in reports about the arguments that bothered me: "What do we do about the fact that the other competitors, Apple, Microsoft ... have, in fact, been able to come up with phones that work just fine without engaging in this kind of copying?" macOS and iOS (and indeed Apple itself) would not exist as we know them today, if at all, without very liberal cross pollination of APIs. In a parallel universe where APIs are copyrighted to the extent that Oracle wants, GNU would not exist. Konqueror and Safari could not use Microsoft's XMLHttpRequest(). The list goes on and on.
  • curt15 6y ago
    I thought Goldstein gave a satisfactory answer here by making the analogy to the difference between English and French.
  • zepto 6y ago
    You say GNU would not exist, which is true in it’s current form. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have had a Unix-like (although not strictly compatible) free system. It’s also true that Safari couldn’t have used XMLHttpRequest unless Microsoft had licensed it. But that might have sped up the incorporation of an open standard alternative. It would definitely have created a different history to the one we have now if APIs were assumed to be copyrighted, but it’s not reasonable to just assume that everything that has been based on them would not have been built some other way.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • marcosdumay 6y ago
      > Unix-like You mean something that implements all the APIs that the Bell Labs never licensed to anybody?
      • zepto 6y ago
        No, I mean something that has the architectural qualities comparable to Unix, which has been done multiple times.
• setheron 6y ago
  This decision doesn't change anything as long as software vendors use a permissive license. The fear mongering about all sorts of cases in which might be affected (API, file formats) area under the assumption that the copyright holder has disallowed use which is the problem. I suspect many will include provisions to allow it in their licenses otherwise the ecosystem for their products would shrink radically.
• jayd16 6y ago
  The questioning seems to imply there's a split among party lines. Is that a coincidence or is there some political aspect to this?
  • tharne 6y ago
    The American right in it's current form tends to treat everything as property and is very supportive of defending all things copyright related. A lot of this has to do with the waning influence of libertarian thought on the American right and it's drift towards a more corporatist philosophy. The American left is better in this respect, but has likewise become more corporatist in it's outlook over time.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > The questioning seems to imply there's a split among party lines. Is that a coincidence or is there some political aspect to this? A little bit of both; the right is more inclined to strong, especially commercial, property rights even for things like copyright that are expressly, both Constitutionally and statutorily, bounded and contingent, while the left is (from a judicial perspective) generally more supportive of public interest limitations in general and fair use, which while statutorily enshrined was judicially created based on the First Amendment before being written into statute, in particular. That said, its far from a perfect mapping and you'll often see splits that don't follow party lines in copyright, and the late Justice Ginsberg, while one of the more liberal justices on the court, was known to favor strong copyright. in general, outside of perennial hotbutton issues that are permanently both highly politically salient, stable in partisan orientation, and at the focus of judicial selection, which copyright very much is not any of, divisions of the court aren't strongly determined by party even when they happen to align with party.
  • flyingfences 6y ago
    TFA: > Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the argument seemed to split along partisan lines. Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch—all apparent Google skeptics—are the court's conservatives. Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan form the liberal wing. Chief Justice Roberts, who asked tough questions of both sides, has often been seen as the court's swing vote since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018. > Grimmelmann argues that this was a coincidence. The late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, was known as a copyright hawk and could easily have sided with Oracle if she were still alive. Before his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Gorsuch authored at least one dovish opinion on copyright issues. In the 2014 Aereo decision, all of the court's liberals (along with two conservatives) held that Aereo had infringed copyright, while three other conservatives dissented.
• elygre 6y ago
  Imagine where we'd been if Google just paid Sun a couple hundred million dollars, and then put it's weight behind Java...
  • CodeWriter23 6y ago
    That would be awesome, a world where Java was discarded.
  • josefx 6y ago
    Google spend a lot of money on not doing that, while Sun was already working on the completely free OpenJDK.
  • flomo 6y ago
    Essentially the core issue here.
  • tmccrary55 6y ago
    stack wise but heap foolish
• kls 6y ago
  I am really not up on copyright law, but I see this as analogous to someone writing a book. Say I wrote a book and titled all of my chapters the same as another book, the book was given a different title and the chapters themselves where very different on the inside but naturally my table of contents looks exactly the same, would this be considered infringe in the publishing world (I don't know)? Also based on that: If it would why would API's be different? If not how was it applied differently here? What if in the above scenario, I added some extra chapters so the TOC has all the chapters the other book had, but the TOC is not a 1 for 1? If my analogy is wrong, what am I not seeing? I know as someone who writes software, API's not being copyrightable is preferable, but I would like to understand how the law sees it when dealing with real physicals works and understand if the law is applied the same when it moves to less concrete works.
  • zucker42 6y ago
    Books are not equivalent to software because software has a functional purpose. While programming has creative elements, the primary goal of a program is to achieve certain functions (whereas the primary goal of a book is to enable creative expression or to record factual information). If I want to support a Windows program on Linux I have no choice but to implement the Windows API. Likewise, if I want to interface with a program that stores data in S3, I have to replicate the S3 API. That's why I think that there's no good analogy for software APIs among traditional media. As far as the law goes, Google's argument is that because software APIs are arbitrary choices and necessary to be copied for interoperability that software APIs are noncopyrightable under section (b) of this statute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102
    • CameronNemo 6y ago
      Books can have a functional purpose. E.g. if it is a reference manual for a car. If you used the same table of contents for the reference manual, but the contents were substantially different, would that still be unlicensed copying?
      • 6y ago
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  This article really overstates the case by focusing on copyrightability while leaving fair use for a tag at the end. Winning on fair use is not a disaster for Google. Google winning on fair use on procedural grounds, if the Court uses that as an excuse not to even answer the copyrightability question (the narrowest possible grounds for a Google victory), does not, contrary to the article's claim that "a Google win on a narrow procedural question would create a lot of legal uncertainty in the software industry", create any new legal uncertainty for the industry.
  • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    If Google wins on fair use, then re-implementing much (but not all) of a 10,000-element API is fair use. That leaves the industry somewhere near "APIs can be copyrighted, but that doesn't change anything".
  • ghaff 6y ago
    This whole general area has managed to be rather ambiguous for a long time now. One of my lawyer friends was reminding me yesterday that the Lotus v. Borland look-and-feel case was actually never decided at the SCOTUS level even though it was taken up because of a circuit split. SCOTUS split 4-4 and let the First Circuit opinion stand.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I thought that until I got to Google's closing remarks. They said that 1) the Federal Circuit didn't really do a de novo review like they said they did, and therefore that their overturning the jury didn't have the excuse that Oracle said it did, and 2) that Oracle was factually incorrect in several statements it made in the hearing. If those claims are accurate, Google is likely to at least win on fair use.
• daniel-thompson 6y ago
  > Supreme court judges just do not have the conceptual framework to properly adjudicate this. I don't think it's going to be possible to teach them the difference between interface and implementation within the parameters of these arguments. I mostly agree with you, but let's give credit where credit is due. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, from TFA: > "[...] since 1992, [courts have said] the application-programming interface, of which the declaring code is a part, is not copyrightable. Implementing codes are. On that understanding, industries have built up around applications that know they can copy only what's necessary to run on the application, but they have to change everything else. That's what Google did here. That's why they took less than 1 percent of the Java code... Everybody knows that APIs, declaring codes, are not copyrightable. Implementing codes are. So please explain to me why we should now upend what the industry has viewed as the copyrightable elements, and has declared that some are methods of operation, and some are expressions. "
  • sjg007 6y ago
    It does go back to the compaq days when they clean room cloned the IBM PC.
    • lytedev 6y ago
      This reminds me of the TV show Halt and Catch Fire, which kind of portrays something similar!
      • sjg007 6y ago
        That show is a dramatization of that period in compaqs history.
  • 101011 6y ago
    Very interesting - can you link your source? I wasn't able to find that quote myself, and wanted to read more.
    • fuzzybear3965 6y ago
• izacus 6y ago
  I haven't seen a single positive article about Google from ArsTechnica (and plenty of ones that were overly sensiationalistic, especially aroudn Android which I'm pretty familiar with professionally). Is there any more independent media article describing what went on in the hearing?
  • bokononon 6y ago
    https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/07/google_oracle_api/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/10/07/google_oracle_api/
• AstralStorm 6y ago
  The big question here is the distinction between standard and API. If Java is also a standard, then laws applicable to all sorts of standards apply. And this could be a relatively good line of defense. An API itself is not necessarily a standard. More importantly, a distinction would have to be made between a standard and its implementation. Technical argument is whether API is procedural or textual. Procedures cannot be copyrighted only patented, including design patents and algorithm patents. But API itself is not procedural. QWERTY sequence of letters is not necessarily copyrightable because it's not a document or result of machine processing of one and as such is a bad analogy. An API actually has a source code and mechanically processed version. Oracle publishes it as documentation, which is probably copyrighted, and Java source code, which was copyrighted until OpenJDK. The trick here is to define minimum creativity required for copyrightable work. If the API is narrow and trivial, you probably cannot copyright it anyway. There is additonal trouble when said API has no meaning without an implementation or is not published. Reverse engineering may be prohibited by a licence.
  • CodeWriter23 6y ago
    Actually, I'm pretty sure whether Sun defended their copyright is the more relevant fact in this case.
• jbullock35 6y ago
  The linked Ars article is excellent, and it's a reminder of how much better Timothy Lee is at covering these issues than the people who cover them for major newspapers. For example, compare his article to the Times article on the same case: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/us/supreme-court-google-oracle.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/07/us/supreme-court-google-o.... It's not enough to say that Lee is writing for a specialized audience while the Times caters to a more general audience. Even after accounting for that, Lee's coverage of the case is superior.
  • dredmorbius 6y ago
    Worth noting Lee wrote for WashPo. As did Krebs. I suspect this has less to do with reporters than editors.
• mindcrime 6y ago
  Maybe we get lucky and the SCOTUS ruling comes down against uncopyable API's. But while that seems questionable at the moment, it's important to remember one thing: there is always an "out" even in the "nuclear option" case and that is "have Congress change the law". It seems to me that now is the time to start thinking about putting together a mass effort to get Congress to change copyright law, to establish clearly the semantic distinction between API and implementation, and to make it clear that the API part can be "copied" in the name of interoperability. No, that's not an easy thing to accomplish, especially without armies of highly paid lobbyists, but I'm guessing that a few big companies - like cough Google cough might be interested in supporting such an effort.
  • mjw1007 6y ago
    I observe the 1978 report that recommended that computer programs should be subject to copyright included the following recommendation in its conclusion: « Any legislation dealing with either computer or photocopying issues enacted and based upon these recommendations should be subject to a process of periodic review. » http://digital-law-online.info/CONTU/PDF/Chapter5.pdf http://digital-law-online.info/CONTU/PDF/Chapter5.pdf
  • foota 6y ago
    Man, wholesale copyright (and patent) reform towards a more restrictive view wrt what is copyrightable and duration would be like Christmas for me.
  • returningfory2 6y ago
    +1 to this. More generally, I feel that one of the main reasons the Supreme Court is such a powerful body nowadays, and why cases like this are considered so important, is because Congress has become so ineffectual. We have internalized the idea that the Supreme Court has the last word on every matter before it. But it emphatically does not. The Supreme Court is only the last word on constitutional cases. So many decisions - this one, certain decisions on gerrymandering - are completely overturnable by Congress.
    • mindcrime 6y ago
• mjw1007 6y ago
  « For decades prior to Oracle's lawsuit, most people in the software industry assumed that APIs couldn't be copyrighted. » Well, what were they supposed to assume? It's shameful that it's been 40 years since computer programs were explicitly protected in the US under copyright law, and this remains an unsettled question. This situation is an extremely poor advertisement for the practice of passing vague laws and letting their boundaries be settled over time by court cases and precedent. It's painful to have to listen to lawyers argue by an analogy between function declarations and Harry Potter chapter titles.
• victor106 6y ago
  Google should have acquired SUN. I read somewhere that they were planning to but didn't due to SUN's hardware business. They should have sold that business off to another company and kept the software side of it.
• karmakaze 6y ago
  This is the thing that really bothers me [from a comment in the post]: > 2) Also realize that the SCOTUS' job is not to decide what's right, but to decide what's legal given the constraints and allowances of both the Constitution and law. Even if a Justice were to feel like copywriting APIs would have terrible knock-on effects, she would be compelled to rule in favor of granting them if she believed that the laws passed by Congress required it. So much of the arguments were specific to the Google/Oracle incident and not as much about the implications except for the thing about QWERTY and perhaps some vague analogies. I thought at the SC level it should always consider 'terrible knock-on effects' and act accordingly considering but not strictly bound to what came before.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Well, they sort of do. When existing precedent is clearly outside the bounds of what's considered "just" today, it's not unknown for SCOTUS to discover a new right or reinterpret a precedent. That said, they (rightly) mostly rely on precedent and the law rather than deciding on the basis of the good of the many by their lights. As someone else in the comments said, I'm on Google's side here on the basis of this being the general industry assumption for a long time and interoperability generally being a good thing. On the other hand, does anyone here honestly believe that a complex API some team spent a lot of time designing isn't really a creative work?
• sthomas1618 6y ago
  Let's say Google loses... badly. What will be the practical consequences for us software engineers?
  • umvi 6y ago
    The consequences will be that people will only use open standards and languages. Proprietary languages and APIs will be shunned because you'll be permanently locked in with compatible alternatives illegal.
    • sthomas1618 6y ago
      So in case of Oracle, OpenJDK will still be viable?
    • mamon 6y ago
      So, after initial fallout it is a long-term win for software industry, right? ;)
      • dodobirdlord 6y ago
        Yea, though the fallout will be pretty bad when IBM comes trolling around with their shiny new copyright on SQL. Copyright lasts 70 years from the death of the author, so IBM would be handed an active infringement claim on basically every company that has ever sold a database product.
        • umvi 6y ago
          I hope Oracle gets hit extra hard in that case
• stephen82 6y ago
  This is not good...not good at all! If Oracle wins, to me with zero knowledge around copyright laws and legalese topics, means small to medium companies will close down out of fear of getting sued for using or implementing a competitor's APIs. Not only that, it feels like the whole technological "civilization" will collapse after this and I'm not exaggerating, because thousands of people will lose their job simply because companies will prefer to close down than go to court with huge companies the size of IBM, Amazon, Alphabet, and Oracle to name a few, and that thought alone lead to financial meltdown...as if we didn't have enough problems already with the pandemic! If we continue like this, it would feel like living in "Minority Report", that we could get sued for simply thinking about implementing a competitor's API! On the positive side, I'm quite curious to see where this could go.
  • coolspot 6y ago
    One question from a judge was that if “API is copyrightable” is bad, why didn’t we see sky falling in last 4 years since federal court decided so?
    • kmeisthax 6y ago
      Because the vast majority of tech companies disagree with the law, and were probably expecting SCOTUS to overturn the case. When they realize that they're leaving money on the table, then we're going to see claims and counterclaims all over the place.
      • merb 6y ago
        well it would be funny if amazon starts to sue oracle. https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Tasks/s3compatibleapi.htm https://docs.cloud.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/Object/Task... I mean even the freaking headers are the same which some could consider an implementation detail.
        • dodobirdlord 6y ago
          Oh yea, if Oracle wins Amazon is filing infringement claims against Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and probably others beside the very next day. Meanwhile MongoDB is going to sue Amazon for reimplementing their API. The real showstopper will be when IBM sues everyone who has ever implemented SQL support for a database. Copyright lasts 70 years past the life of the author, people would still be infringing on SQL to this very day!
• exrook 6y ago
  I'd highly encourage anyone interested in this case to hear the oral arguments for themselves, you can listen to them here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-america-oral-argument https://www.c-span.org/video/?469263-1/google-v-oracle-ameri... While I believe that it would be better for society if the court sides with Google, I personally think that APIs can be a creative work, and thus would have copyright protection under the law. However one of Google's arguments is that Oracle is trying to use copyright to acquire a patent-like right, referencing the case of Baker v. Selden[0]. Despite being from 1879(!) I found this case to be especially relevant and I'm quite interested to see how the court will consider it into their opinion. In his arguments, Oracle's lawyer argues that declaring code is not distinguishable from implementing code and thus deserves all the same copyright protections. As a programmer I find this argument quite unconvincing, as there is clearly a technical distinction in many systems, see: .h files, dynamic linking, etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  For a different view of the same oral argument: "Justices wary of upending tech industry in Google v. Oracle Supreme Court fight" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/07/supreme-court-hears-google-v-oracle-software-copyright-case.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/07/supreme-court-hears-google-v...
• f154hfds 6y ago
  I started reading this article today thinking that the case was clear-cut - Oracle's wrong and Google is right. As I read the article and the comments I'm now not at all sure. We all are trying to come up with a good analogy to explain why APIs are distinct from implementations, why it's 'obvious' to a programmer how they're distinct, and how their rules should be distinct. But the more I think about it, and read feeble attempts to relate software to other industries, I am starting to think I was wrong. In my experience, especially where good design is encouraged and respected, I can spend far more time designing the API than implementing it! If I create a proprietary API shouldn't it be protected? Or am I misunderstanding the nature of the debate?
  • orev 6y ago
    This could be easily explained using an analogy like a pipe. If you need to connect a hose to your house, the connector (interface) needs to match the spigot size and threads. The API is simply the information about the size and thread measurement, along with the knowledge that you can get water out of it when you turn the handle. Having this knowledge and building compatible hoses or spigots doesn’t mean you have stolen anything from the company who made the original spigot. I could easily come up with dozens of analogies that explain this concept in terms understandable by senior citizens, and it’s inexcusable that this lawyer can’t do the same.
    • babesh 6y ago
      That is a terrible analogy since the potential conceptual range of APIs is so wide and because it does disservice to the conceptual power of APIs. Good APIs embody the key architectural and conceptual decisions. They define the key concepts and how they interact. But at the level of a programming language, this is of immense scope and power. Java defines an imperative language with built in garbage collection with abstraction from physical hardware. Furthermore, the real distinction between API and implementation is that API are that which needs to be exposed to the world. Programming languages are more akin to defining the fundamental laws of a universe. Physics to chemistry. It is true that other APIs are of much smaller scope but the point is that the range is so wide.
• bambax 6y ago
  Slightly OT but not really: why didn't Google buy Sun when it could?? I'll never understand this.
  • ghaff 6y ago
    Or Google could have come to terms with Sun with respect to Java. I'm sure they regret not having done so at this point. Whatever you may think of Oracle in this case, Google basically f'ed up big time.
  • koshinae 6y ago
    Sun was not that kind of a lawsuit people. Eric Schmidt knew that. They only got screwed when Oracle bought Sun.
• syspec 6y ago
  > Jonathan Schwartz's (CEO of Sun when Google re-implemented the Java APIs): > "Google's lawyer, Robert van Nest, asked Schwartz whether, during his tenure at Sun, Java APIs were considered proprietary or protected by Sun." > "'No,' Schwartz said in explaining the nature of open software. 'These are open APIs, and we wanted to bring in more people...we wanted to build the biggest tent and invite as many people as possible.'" I feel like I would raise this fact repeatedly, if i was trying to make my case.
  • Lammy 6y ago
    I would too, but I assume the legal team has more experience with what points tend to matter in court and that “what the previous owner would have done” must not be one of them.
  • kodablah 6y ago
    This has been brought up many times in many of the cases. IIRC, it has repeatedly been ignored as not an official statement (same w/ his past blog posts) and that the original intent is unrelated to whether they are protectable.
    • thebean11 6y ago
      IANAL, but it's surprising that the original intent, or the manner in which a product was sold, would not matter. That means a company can trick people into an ecosystem by lying about their licensing terms, then suddenly pull the rug out?
• doesnotexist 6y ago
  Should Oracle win this case, I predict that Free Software licenses will emerge as the clear market choice. Licenses that enshrine interoperability along with the freedom to modify or reimplement in part or wholesale will suddenly provide significantly more value over non-Free software which will be a proprietary minefield and the value will not be for technical but purely from legal liability. Anyone setting out to do something new would be wise to build on top of software they are at least assured will not be used against them in court should they find success building ontop of it.
  • jrm4 6y ago
    Glad to see this take, it was in line with what I was thinking. Namely, that APIs have always been an extremely poor excuse for true openness, more or less a way to get that half-freedom of "letting other people do your work for you" without always being required to give back.
  • laurent92 6y ago
    I don’t understand why software and other IP rights aren’t de facto open-source after 10 or 20 years, if nothing else for archive and legacy purpose, but also to encourage sustained innovation. I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests. Found the source of Windows XP? It’s alright, you shouldn’t be condemned for publishing it, it will only help with bugfixes and security, and as long as the owner refuses to sell it...
    • rayiner 6y ago
      > I’m not even leftist; but even in the capitalist/libertarian theory, the state shouldn’t help guard private companies’ rights in software. If you publish it, the recipient has it, period. The state lending its judges to enforce exclusive rights for a few years is already a big extraction of collective resources for private interests. How is software, something of which there is an infinite supply that doesn’t exist until someone creates it, more of a “collective resource” than my back yard, which was here before I was born and will remain here after I die?
• mwfunk 6y ago
  Alito/Thomas/Kavanaugh are clearly on the wrong side of this, big freaking surprise there. If Oracle wins this is going to be catastrophic for our whole industry (in the US at least). Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
• syspec 6y ago
  > This is a widespread practice in the software industry. Oracle, for example, re-implemented Amazon's S3 API so that customers who built software for Amazon's cloud platform could easily switch to Oracle's rival cloud platform. Oracle themselves are doing it, could someone with a better legal mind explain to me how this doesn't make the case simpler to decide? Is it that they're saying, it should be illegal but since it is not we are playing the game by the current rules, but we hope to change those rules?
  • gojomo 6y ago
    As far as I know, Amazon isn't objecting. So, Oracle can say: we're "doing it" with permission.
    • zaphar 6y ago
      If this case goes the wrong way Oracle may find itself the subject of a lawsuit.
      • moonchild 6y ago
        They surely know that. Java is a bigger money maker for them than cloud. (Large parts of amazon's cloud are implemented in java.)
        • curt15 6y ago
          Isn't OpenJDK the standard implementation of Java these days? Why would Amazon be using something different?
      • CivBase 6y ago
        They probably figure they'll make more from this one than they'll lose to Amazon.
  • eikenberry 6y ago
    They are probably thinking that they could negotiate licenses with the other big companies easier than any startup could, thus locking out a lot of competition.
• RichardCA 6y ago
  No one's discussed Lotus v. Borland yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int%27l,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_In.... The issue was that the Borland Quattro spreadsheet had the ability to emulate the menu hierarchy of Lotus 1-2-3. So the SCOTUS was asked to weigh in on whether a software menu system represents a copyrightable expression of an idea. What ended up happening was one justice recused himself and the eight remaining members were evenly split. In essence, they threw up their hands and gave up. It may as well have been a coin toss.
• gumby 6y ago
  Why is this being pitched (in all the press I have seen) as a "google vs Oracle" fight? This is a direct attack on software development by Oracle, who will also suffer if they prevail in the courts.
  • CameronNemo 6y ago
    A. That is the actual name of the case. B. "Faceoff", "versus", and " debate" pander to the competitive culture of American business and politics.
• pvelagal 6y ago
  Google should have bought Sun.
• megous 6y ago
  It's not like all hinges on oral arguments. Lots of organizations informed the court in this case, about the issues at hand: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/18-956.html https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Rochus 6y ago
  Happy who lives in a country where reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is explicitly allowed by law. So do we have to expect more economic refugees from the USA in Europe in the future?
• ColanR 6y ago
  I wonder if Oracle winning would reinvigorate software developement - by which I mean, maybe the resulting fragmentation would leave a lot of room for new ideas to be developed. e.g.: if this court case was decided before Google made Android, then Google would have had to use something other than Java to do it and they wouldn't have been able to attract such a large developer base to make apps. Maybe they would have come up with a new language, or reused whatever else was viable at the time. But, maybe their OS wouldn't have been so overwhelming in its popularity and other OSes, like PalmOS and the windows phone OS, could have remained alive today. I think there's a lot of people, maybe the majority, who would agree that Android's UI was inferior to one or both of those alternatives. e.g. #2: looking to the future, the resulting fragmentation could mean that even new OSes will have to be developed (edit - since even kernel APIs could be covered by copyright). That could be pretty bad for open source and hacking in general - except that as another poster has pointed out, closed-down software might turn out to be pretty useless compared to open-source. Maybe Oracle winning could be a really good thing for reinvigorating the development of new paradigms in software.
  • chabad360 6y ago
    Fragmentation is almost never a good thing and it's certainly not a good thing in this case. Allowing developers to use the same knowledge, the same interfaces, the se languages across systems means that consumers benefit. Having a de facto standard is good for everyone, and arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous.
    • ColanR 6y ago
      Seems like it could be compared to breaking up a monopoly. When there's one player in town (Java & Android in the two examples I used), any competing ideas never get a chance to succeed: we're still using variations of Java, probably at this point for historical reasons, and Purism etc. is having a real rough go of it. Look at the failed attempts at competing OSes that various phone manufacturers put out. There were some duds, but I mentioned two that could have given Andriod a run for its money if there were more fragmentation in the market - and I think that would have been better for consumers. > arguing that there is less innovation in programming because you don't own the rights to function names is ridiculous I applaud the rhetorical flourish, but I think it misses the point. It's not the cause of the fragmentation, but the fragmentation caused by the lost rights that improves the innovation.
• jgilias 6y ago
  To me the best explanation of an Application Programming Interface (spelling it out on purpose) is really the comparison with industrial machinery. It's really the switches, knobs and levers of a machine that you use to make it do something. I get it that an API being textual throws non-technical people off. But for a programmer functionally there's not much difference between a physical object, like a steering wheel, and some API call to invoke. They are both just something you use to interact with the underlying system. Hence the term. It's sort of perplexing that Google would send someone who can't explain this point of view well.
  • ummonk 6y ago
    Exactly. It would be like a company copyrighting the shape of its proprietary replacement parts, and then suing another company for providing 3rd party replacement parts.
    • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      To me, it's more like copyrighting the control placement in a car. Nobody else can use accelerator on the right, brake on the left? What's that going to do to drivers? That's Google's argument.
  • salawat 6y ago
    They did. In legal parlance, that's a method-of-operation, and the relevant case law was Seldon(?). In which someone wrote a book on double entry accounting, then sued someone for infringement of their forms. The process of using a two column form couldn't be copyrighted, since that would essentially be a patent, and the Court determined a book teaching you how to do a thing implicitly grants license to do so without jeopardy of infringement. API's represent the documentation and actuators to make a machine do it's thing, therefore, both by test of "is it a control or thing allowing one to control another thing?" (Method-of-operation in common parlance) or "is it a communicative work teaching you to how to operate a specific process?" It passes muster. I thought that was rather straightforward. What wasn't straightforward to me was Oracle trying to argue that somehow, it makes sense that everyone should be forced to write their own language runtimes, and that somehow you can separate Java the language and virtual machine from the entity hierarchy, or that that is even a tenable state of affairs. Goldstein should have been slamming the "in Java" point hard. Further, why was no one arguing that programming languages themselves are the front-end manifestations of interoperability by converting high level linguistics down to machine code? This isn't hard.
• nimish 6y ago
  Easily fixable with an amended copyright act if necessary. Legislate!
• jtchang 6y ago
  Hold on while I copyright all accessor and modifier methods. From now on there will be a licensing fee if you ever use getters or setters.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway4good 6y ago
  Silly arrogant Google should have bought Sun MS when they had the chance ... Or just settled with Oracle a long time ago.
• lifeisstillgood 6y ago
  We all seem to assume that there is an obviousness defence, because we are like fish and water. And it makes a degree of sense - take the articles example lang.java.math.sum - there are a limited number of ways "adding up an array" can be expressed in English. All of which are obvious and based around domain jargon - all very hard to copyright. However what interests me about this case is how fast it all unravels Is this about the math.sum part of about the lang.java part? It cannot be the math.sum because then every other language from Rust to Python gets clobbered. If it is about the lang.java then hey maybe Oracle has a point. But it only means "you cannot copy lang.java.math.sum and that surely is an accident of language design - for example in Python the same call is math.isinf. That's the part used in the code that I write, that's the import signature. The API. So from my pov this should be a very narrow ruling - if the import signature is not obvious and is unique (lang.java.x) then yeah fine Google, they stole your developers. I also wonder about how transferable the obvious part is - math.ist_unendlich is fine for german speakers. Is that obvious if the rest of the manual is in English? And if Google had gone for lang.gava.math.sum (don't tell me it was not at least discussed :-)? It does overall seem a big fuss over a small hill of beans. If the supreme court rules in a narrow and well defined manner they just move the industry in favour of open and free, in a broad and badly defined manner they move the industry off US shores. Neither side is that bad for the software world
• didibus 6y ago
  "copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years" That's ridiculous for software APIs, I could be okay with APIs having some temporary copyright for a shorter amount of time, say 5 years, but that's just unreasonably too much. Do we have any other technical fields where technical work fall under copyright? I feel that's the main issue, copyright was clearly designed for work of art and fiction.
• didibus 6y ago
  I would make the argument that what distinguishes APIs from code is that APIs cannot be executed, they are not code because the computer cannot run it. And only code is copyrightable, code requires to be executable on some machine. Thus it is clear that only the implementation is copyrightable. That said, at this point, I don't even care about the interpretation of the law, this issue has to just be addressed by the executive branch, truth be told, the rules should be explicitly stated, and I almost feel someone could make a case and sue the government with being so vague, allowing multi billion businesses to get built and a whole industry assuming they had the correct interpretation of the law, when in fact it gets interpreted differently. I don't know if this is possible to sue the government for, but like, how enraging is it if everyone for years clearly thinks they know the rules and all abide by some interpretation of it worth billions of dollars. Clearly the law needed to be revised a long time ago.
• granzymes 6y ago
  The article mentions that Google faced some tough questions on their merger doctrine argument (that because there was only one way to implement the declaring code Oracle can’t preclude Google from reusing it) but it doesn’t really mention the fact that Oracle faced much tougher questioning on their procedural argument that the Federal Circuit correctly overturned the district court jury decision. Listening to the oral arguments I have a hard time counting to 5 either way on the issue of API copyright and Google’s merger doctrine argument, but I think it’s quite likely that there are 5 votes to send the case back to the Federal Circuit with instructions to take another look at fair use. Essentially, the district court jury found in favor of Google on fair use and the Federal Circuit set that verdict aside on the grounds that no reasonable person could conclude there was fair use. None of the justices sounded happy about that.
  • slaymaker1907 6y ago
    The important part is that the Federal Circuit overturned the decision of a jury which is not generally allowed. If it was just a lower court judge, they could make that kind of ruling without much controversy. The reasonable person argument just seems like an excuse to overturn the decision of a jury. If there were problems with the process, that can be used to overturn the jury decision.
• nodamage 6y ago
  I'm not sure why so many people here seem to be surprised by this, I got the exact same impression from the hearing. The problem for Google on the copyrightability front is that "compilations" of non-copyrightable items can be copyrightable even if the underlying items themselves are not, if the "selection, coordination, or arrangement" of those items involves sufficient creativity to be considered an "original work of authorship". For example, individual recipes are generally not copyrightable, but if you compile a set of recipes and publish them in a cookbook, the cookbook itself becomes copyrightable. As applied to Java, individual method signatures like min and max might not be copyrightable, but someone had to go in and organize those individual methods into classes, and organize those classes into packages. That act of organization likely implies that the Java API (taken as a whole) constitutes a copyrightable work, even if the individual method signatures are not. What's worse for Google is that code has always been considered copyrightable so arguing that APIs are non-copyrightable is essentially carving out an exception for a specific type of code. As is common when HN discusses legal matters I see a lot of people blaming the judges for not understanding tech, but the problem here isn't really the judges so much as the law itself. We should not be surprised if Oracle ends up winning here, at least on the question of copyrightability. Google may have an out related to fair use, but that seems like a long shot as well.
  • cafed00d 6y ago
    > As is common when HN discusses legal matters I see a lot of people blaming the judges for not understanding tech, but the problem here isn't really the judges so much as the law itself. Yep I second this. I think there’s a parallel “legal news” community somewhere pointing at us here going “those nerds don’t understand how law works” :) What we should _all_ be doing more actively, imo, is nudging our representatives to update the law to create legislation that answers definitively “whether APIs are copyrightable or not”. Albeit, that is a much more difficult and slower process. Well, you know what they say about democracy as a form of government though: “something something yeah, it kinda sucks but it’s the best we’ve got something”
  • granzymes 6y ago
    I wouldn’t be surprised if Oracle wins on copyright (I think it is almost impossible for Google to count to 5 on their merger doctrine argument) but I disagree that fair use is a long shot. The justices that brought up the case’s procedural history were all unanimously skeptical that the Federal Circuit correctly set aside the fair use verdict in favor of Google. I think the most likely outcome of this case (especially with the absence of Justice Ginsburg) is a remand to the Federal Circuit with instructions to pay more attention to the trial court’s findings.
• akerro 6y ago
  >Justice Clarence Thomas compared Google's copying of the Java APIs to a football team taking a rival's playbook. Maybe it should be compared to English dictionary, where American English cannot use words from pre-existing British English.
• pyb 6y ago
  It would be initially problematic, but I do not believe that an Oracle win would be that disruptive in the long run. What would happen is that API providers would from now on have to provide standardized legal assurances that users are allowed to implement their API (in part or in whole). APIs that do not provide these assurances will go mostly unused. As an imperfect analogy, think about the fact that many companies no longer want to use GPL code because of the legal ramifications. Open source authors would want their code used at those places use other licenses such as MIT.
• LockAndLol 6y ago
  I bet if this goes through, the US will try to enforce a completely backwards view on the rest of the world in the name of profit. One can only hope that at least some countries will tell the US where to stick it with idiotic laws like that. Absolute lunacy.
• stickfigure 6y ago
  It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to figure out who can claim copyright to SQL, Posix, C, various assembly languages, HTML, HTTP, TCP/IP... pretty much everything. Are copyright trolls buying this stuff up yet? Seems like a whole new asset class is about to be invented.
• crazygringo 6y ago
  Does anyone have any idea, if Oracle wins, what the ramifications for Google/Android will be? Because Android is so entrenched, there's no "going back". Google merely paying a fine doesn't change the fact it's still using Java API's moving forwards. Google would have to license the Java API from Oracle... but then who sets the price? Oracle could set something absurdly 1000x higher than reasonable by holding the entire Android ecosystem hostage, no? Would the court decide not just penalties for past usage, but a negotiation for future usage? How would they determine that? (And if they did, couldn't that create a moral hazard? Companies steal IP from someone who refuses to sell, get "too big to fail", and get to keep the stolen IP in the end.) I'm not familiar with how the law relates to ongoing conflicts that are so massive they can't be undone without great harm to individuals and businesses far beyond the actual parties in dispute.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Does anyone have any idea, if Oracle wins, what the ramifications for Google/Android will be? I understand that Android currently uses OpenJDK, under its public license, so I think the ramifications will be "Google pays buttloads of money to Oracle for past misuse and continues happily on its way". At least as far as the Java APIs are concerned; there will be lawsuits flying back and forth everywhere in the industry over every other reused API that isn't explicitly licensed, which will probably also effect Android in some way.
• bencollier49 6y ago
  This would have protected the IBM PC BIOS wouldn't it? The BIOS interrupts are an API. Would it not also apply in retrospect? Could IBM not sue everyone who ever made a clone now? Or is there a statute of limitations?
• alex_young 6y ago
  Remember that the idea that you can’t copyright an API is at the fundamental root of the PC revolution. If IBM had been allowed a universal copyright on the API for its BIOS, it’s very likely you wouldn’t be reading this on the device you’re using today.
• blunte 6y ago
  It is absurd that "judges" should be in the position to judge issues which they have no understanding of. I would bet that at least some of the members of the Supreme Court do not even know how to check and send email. In the same way they depend on others to perform basic and advanced computer tasks, they should depend on a "jury" of tech experts to filter the cases and provide suggestions or hopefully reasonable analogies to concepts the judges can comprehend. But now, on the topic of copyrighting APIs... it's stupid, and it's protectionist, and it's the kind of thing a company does when they can't compete or want to try to block competition. Most types of copyright are bogus for the same reasons. Not only is there the strong possibility of more than one person coming up with the same idea at approximately the same time, in different places, but very few ideas are truly unique or revolutionary. Instead, it becomes a race to see who can copyright (or patent) something first - either defensively or with future hopes of preventing competition or extracting payment from a competitor. If modern copyright and patent law had always existed, humanity would be decades or perhaps centuries behind where it is now.
  • 1123581321 6y ago
    You are describing Supreme Court clerks with your first suggestion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_law_clerks_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_law_clerks_of_the_S...
    • blunte 6y ago
      I find it hard to believe that even a top performing law school grad would be a subject matter expert comparable to a 5 or 10+ year developer for this topic.
      • ledauphin 6y ago
        (speaking as a software developer) this dramatically underestimates the intelligence of top lawyers relative to average software developers, and also misunderstands the facts of how law works (the subject matter expertose required is still mostly in law rather than in software development).
• FandangoRanger 6y ago
  I wish Google had just licensed Java from Sun.
• bob33212 6y ago
  Lets Say that that Oracle wins. Does that mean that all 100+ companies who have copywrites on their software which all include "Helper.GetGUID" or "Calendar.NewMeeting" are going to sue each other to find out who the 1 true owner of the "Helper.GetGUID" API call is?
  • TheDong 6y ago
    One of the ways copyright and patents differ is that patents can be infringed even if it's proven you had no prior knowledge of said patent, but copyright requires actual copying to infringe. Independently arriving at the same API name is a defense from copyright violations. If both of us write the exact same method name, and we can both prove we didn't copy the other's, that's enough. We both have copyright over our own api call that we wrote. Copyright probably shouldn't apply in any case that we could both independently create the same thing (in the same way the sentence "Hi, how are you" isn't copyrightable, but a chapter of shakespeare is -- the former is not a real expression of unique creativity). So no, copyright does not determine the "1 true owner" of something that was not copied. That's patents.
• filereaper 6y ago
  Maybe someone should have bought out Sun and not let their crown jewels go to the most opportunistic company that's out there? Could have avoided all of this and as a society we could have moved on an built better things. Only the lawyers won here. Something for the current FAANG's to consider, buy the company that has goodwill but isn't doing well financially for various reasons.
• shmerl 6y ago
  Declaring APIs copyrightable is disgusting.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    This court hasn't decided anything on the issue, so that's a bit premature unless its a response to the general concept of the Supreme Court deciding anything, in which case its a bit...tangential.
    • shmerl 6y ago
      Yeah, I corrected the comment. I also find it weird that "conservative" judges are expected to support APIs copyrightability. Is it because conservative is supposed to mean opposed to progress? Declaring APIs copyrightable is going to hurt the progress and technology.
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        > I also find it weird that "conservative" judges are expected to support APIs copyrightability. They aren't expected to because they are conservative. The judges that acted in a way which (the writer believes) suggests they support Oracle's position happen to also be the conservative justices.
        • shmerl 6y ago
          How much of this happen to be is accidental? For me it looks like a pattern. Especially if they are divided by the same lines. Let's wait and see until the final decision though.
          • dragonwriter 6y ago
            > How much of this happen to be is accidental? A lot. It's not like anyone is appointing judges with an API-copyrightability litmus test.
• apeescape 6y ago
  If I copy a book's Table of Contents, but write the chapters myself, am I violating the original book's copyrights? Isn't it pretty much analogous to what's in contention here?
• yarg 6y ago
  Google broke compatibility with Java, so I don't think that the argument that this nullifies the right to reimplementation holds water. If Android had been implemented in such a way as to allow pre-existing java applications to execute natively this would be a very different situation.
• pjfin123 6y ago
  I'm curious if the Hush-A-Phone case is any precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-A-Phone_Corp._v._United_S... . It involved a company that made a device you connected to your telephone who got sued by AT&T and won. The compatibility with a proprietary phone network is vaguely analogous to an API.
• jonhendry18 6y ago
  This seems bad, as a precedent, for the entire industry/hobbyists/etc. Way to go, Google.
• stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Maybe this will persuade Google to use a better language that welcomes innovation (rust/c++) and frees them from Java commitments and they see past the sunk cost fallacy. It also displays why all companies should move away from Oracle and their totalitarian attitude and towards open source databases that respect their rights.
  • dodobirdlord 6y ago
    Google already transitioned over to OpenJDK in 2016, which they have an ironclad right to use for free. This litigation is just about whether Google owes Oracle money for the period 2008-2016.
• cutler 6y ago
  Will this cast a shadow over Java adoption in general? Yes, I know it's about APIs but still.
• gerash 6y ago
  The DOJ lawyer was the worst part. Why was that clown even taking a such a strong side in a technical case like this?
• causality0 6y ago
  Oracle is happy to throw sand in the gears of the entire global software ecosystem if it adds a percentage point to their profits for the year.
• yk 6y ago
  From a technical perspective I have actually a hard time to argue what is an API, and what is 'normal code,' in particular because a lot of code uses internal interfaces and DSLs. However as an open source radical, I would lean in the opposite direction and argue that code shouldn't be copyrightable in the first place. And actually I think a ruling that APIs are copyrightable would be very good for copy left licenses and languages described in open standards, because they would not leave on at the mercy of a single monopolist.
• chottocharaii 6y ago
  ITT: 1) Non-lawyers experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect 2) People not realising that Supreme Court appeals are 99% about the written submissions, with the oral hearing barely relevant to the final decision at all.
• whatsmyusername 6y ago
  I look forward to Amazon suing Oracle for reimplementing their APIs.
• doonesbury 6y ago
  Trying to get up to speed on this whole issue .. but as a software engineer, I'm a little surprised APIs are not copyrightable. Putting aside the pedantically literal creative work that goes into documenting an API and naming functions, the chief engineering role of the API is, - breaking the domain of work into well modeled types - information hiding - keeping dependencies together and/or variously keeping data dependencies apart - leaving room for extensibility - speed of operations - and promoting the correct use i.e. single v. multi-threaded or one server vs. distributed That's real work, and getting a "good API" i.e. recognized throughout industry as well adapted to the problem domain (say SQL for DB work) or copy-on-write for C++-strings almost always reflects a better implementation which bubbles into the API.
• keypusher 6y ago
  Google should have bought Sun. They would have been better custodians probably, and in the end Oracle will basically get it for free after this battle is over.
• mortehu 6y ago
  If you have the source code for projects written in Java that collectively use every API endpoint in the standard library, you can reconstruct the API perfectly, thanks to static typing and the absence of type inference and default parameters. Would it be a copyright violation to distribute these projects along with a tool for reconstructing the API declarations from them?
• abvdasker 6y ago
  Further proof that the Supreme Court of the United States has been captured by right-wing ideologues who view every problem as having a solution in property rights. Why anyone in the US would think it's a good idea to change the foundations of the software industry — one of the few remaining bright spots in the US's sputtering economy — is beyond me. I guess in the end Americans will get what they deserve.
  • gwright 6y ago
    This seems like shooting the messenger to me. The problem is that the legislature hasn't done its job. It isn't the job of the judiciary to monkey-patch the law to get a desired outcome. They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation.
    • abvdasker 6y ago
      "They should be interpreting the law as written and any negative consequences should be addressed by legislation." What good is the legislation when it get cuts to ribbons in the courts? Look at what happened to the ACA and the individual mandate. Even modest progressive legislation can barely survive the current court, so I'm not sure your proposed solution works. "interpreting the law as written" is a farce. The court is a minoritarian conservative bulwark that can rule however it wants with no accountability. The law is what they want it to be. Always has been.
      • gwright 6y ago
        Not sure what to conclude from that. The standard positions seem to be: * the right is more in favor of originalism * the left is more in favor of the living constitution view You seem to be claiming that the right is actually acting in alignment with the living constitution view, which is an unusual take on this IMHO.
        • abvdasker 6y ago
          I'm saying that the legal doctrines merely provide a veneer of rationalization for decisions obviously motivated by political ideology (on both sides). I'm saying the legal doctrine is totally irrelevant.
• wharfjumper 6y ago
  Does anyone have any insight on why Google didn't buy Sun (which held a large patent portfolio)? It seemed an obvious move well before Oracle purchased them so I have no doubt that Google considered it.
• dangjc 6y ago
  There’s a lot of hand wringing about the Supreme Court, but to fix copyright, a simple act of Congress could exclude api’s.
• deleted 6y ago
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• mastrsushi 6y ago
  It seems the ideas of interfaces became lost in translation to the judges. The comparison to a football playbook showed that. A playbook would have more in common with a concrete implementation than this idea of standard specifications as "trade secrets". As long as they don't extend the language to break compatibility as Microsoft J++ did, I don't see anything wrong. At the same time there needs to be dissolution within FAANG. Hopefully this loss will help that instead of putting strain on the developer community.
• elisbce 6y ago
  People are confused about the differences between creativity and copyrights. Is API design work creative? Absolutely yes. Is all creative work copyrightable? Not necessarily. Copyrights have to be limited to very specific categories of use in order to make sure the interests are balanced between copyright holders and the general public. Compatibility at the interface level or format level is one such example. Same thing nobody should be able to copyright that a car has 4 wheels and 2-4 doors. Same thing nobody should be able to claim copyrights for poems with 14 lines.
• rkagerer 6y ago
  Breyer might be my new hero: In fact, a couple of justices did a better job articulating Google's position than Google's own lawyer. "It's like the QWERTY keyboard," Breyer said in a question to Oracle's lawyer. "You didn't have to have a QWERTY keyboard on typewriters in the beginning. But my God, if you let somebody have a copyright on that now, they would control all typewriters, which really has nothing to do with copyright"
• fractalb 6y ago
  Off topic: API’s in dynamically typed languages like Python won’t get this type of lawsuits? If yes, there is an upside to dynamic typing.
• kabes 6y ago
  Let this just be the daily reminder to not touch anything Oracle with a 10 foot pole.
• 02020202 6y ago
  only murica has software patents and software patents are fucking retarded.
• prince005 6y ago
  Reading the article I get a feeling that the judges don't really understand what an API is. Also, the comment > I'm concerned that under your argument, all computer code is at risk of losing protection under 102(b) It seems rather incorrect in case of reimplementing an API. It's not like the underlying logic has been changed or copied it's just that the top level API has been modified to be compatible with the system being used. Or am I missing something?
• deleted 6y ago
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• pseingatl 6y ago
  Result: win for Oracle. Two years of squabbling and more lawsuits. Congress then passes a law exempting API's. Problem solved.
• tutfbhuf 6y ago
  I think it will be a win-win situation no matter what. If Google loose, we will see an even bigger shift to FOSS, which is obviously a win for the whole developer community. If Oracle loose well then things stay as they are, we are still moving to FOSS but we don't have an Supreme Court accelerator behind that movement, still fine.
• timka 6y ago
  The ultimate solution is making copyright a non-transferable author's right. Period.
• drtillberg 6y ago
  If API's are copyrightable, does this mean hypertext Internet links are copyrightable too? Uh oh!
• thecompilr 6y ago
  For me a good analogy to API is driving a car. The interface (API) to the car is the steering wheel, the pedals, and some common controls like signals and the horn. You only need to learn to drive one car, and you can drive them all. But under the hood the cars are completely different. Gas, diesel, battery, hybrid, all have the same API, yet no one says that you copied a car if it has a steering wheel. One could probably reinvent the (steering) wheel and possibly make a better interface to the car, but that would result in people having to learn how to drive your car specifically.
• kovacs_x 6y ago
  It's strange that there's little of comparison of an API to a standard. (Think like ISO standards) as API is not a program itself, it's a rule-set how two programms can interoperate. Patenting API's imo is like patenting a rule set for a game (say like football). Imagine someone patenting rules for a football and afterwards it's allowed only to play the game if you are "licensed" by the patent holder. anyways- the Googles defense team seems bland. Not sure whether they really understand the idea of what API is and what's it's purpose and that API's textual representation is absolutely non-essential.
  • kovacs_x 6y ago
    Imo, making API's copyrightable will only make things worse for all the US based software companies, sort of gain dollar, loose hundred situation, as it'll open a whole new front in an already existing software patent wars. Maybe it's just what Google wants- to test the water and this is more of a opening act and the real play is only ahead of us! ;)
• HotHotLava 6y ago
  I'm wondering: Assuming Oracle wins on copyrightability, how will it affect BSD-licensed software? The license text just says > Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: [...] But reimplementing the API is neither using the source code nor distributing it, so would it be covered or not?
• psmithsfhn 6y ago
  going up against Trump while he controls the the executive and judiciary branches is not smart.
• nuker 6y ago
  I say let them both bleed to death, for a better world. Pity is that there is no guarantee that survivor will be shot in the head after that.