3 ms·

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!
    - merb 6y ago
      actually that would be good for the market, since your courts really see, that the world is going down.
dragonwriter 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? Which was a fairly stupid question from a Supreme Court Justice, because you'd think that they know that decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on issues not within their special subject matter jurisdiction (which copyright is not) are not binding authority on any lower court, as the lower courts (and, in fact, the CAFC itself) are bound by the actual precedent of the regional circuit court (even trial courts in, in this case, the Ninth Circuit, whose law the CAFC notionally was applying in its Oracle v. Google decision, are not bound by the CAFC ruling, only by decisions actually issued by the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court.) So there is currently no binding precedent applicable to any federal trial court that APIs are copyrightable, which is why the sky hasn't fallen. You would think that, however much they might not understand APIs, Supreme Court Justices would be intimitately familiar with the appellate structure of the US federal courts.

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!
  - merb 6y ago
    actually that would be good for the market, since your courts really see, that the world is going down.

dragonwriter 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? Which was a fairly stupid question from a Supreme Court Justice, because you'd think that they know that decisions of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on issues not within their special subject matter jurisdiction (which copyright is not) are not binding authority on any lower court, as the lower courts (and, in fact, the CAFC itself) are bound by the actual precedent of the regional circuit court (even trial courts in, in this case, the Ninth Circuit, whose law the CAFC notionally was applying in its Oracle v. Google decision, are not bound by the CAFC ruling, only by decisions actually issued by the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court.) So there is currently no binding precedent applicable to any federal trial court that APIs are copyrightable, which is why the sky hasn't fallen. You would think that, however much they might not understand APIs, Supreme Court Justices would be intimitately familiar with the appellate structure of the US federal courts.