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> say, a new battery It would be more about copying the batteries terminal structure, such that you could build products compatible with the battery or a batt

> say, a new battery It would be more about copying the batteries terminal structure, such that you could build products compatible with the battery or a battery compatible with the products. It snot about copying the battery, its about supporting interoperability. That's what is at risk here. Sixty seven different kinds of outlets, or arbitrarily expensive ones where the "design" itself is licesned, instead of the code.

pdonis 6y ago
> its about supporting interoperability I think this is a very important point. I haven't read all of the briefs in this case, or looked at the arguments presented at the hearing, so I don't know if Google's lawyers stressed this point, but they sure ought to.
- az226 6y ago
  Google would lose if they would continue hammering the interop point and the justices would dig deeper. Google only copied a selective set of Oracle's Java libraries. If they were about interop, they would have copied all of them. So no, Google didn't copy the libraries because of interoperability reasons. Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. As one of the justices said, it's a one-way interoperability.
  - tylerchr 6y ago
    > Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. I like this framing and think it’s entirely correct, but I don’t agree that it necessarily dooms the interoperability argument. Google wasn’t trying to achieve compatibility with existing code (for which, you’re right, they’d have needed to take the whole set) but rather compatibility with existing developers. Arguably, that is still interoperability.
    - az226 6y ago
      I see your point. But because it would be interoperable with the developers and not the end users, so it’s still no dice for Google. The QWERTY keyboard is a good example of interoperability with end users (but not of copyright itself). So the courts would not give weight to that aspect.

pdonis 6y ago

> its about supporting interoperability I think this is a very important point. I haven't read all of the briefs in this case, or looked at the arguments presented at the hearing, so I don't know if Google's lawyers stressed this point, but they sure ought to.

az226 6y ago
Google would lose if they would continue hammering the interop point and the justices would dig deeper. Google only copied a selective set of Oracle's Java libraries. If they were about interop, they would have copied all of them. So no, Google didn't copy the libraries because of interoperability reasons. Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. As one of the justices said, it's a one-way interoperability.
- tylerchr 6y ago
  > Google copied them so they would get access to the large developer community and ride the coattails of the successful investments into the Java platform that Oracle made. I like this framing and think it’s entirely correct, but I don’t agree that it necessarily dooms the interoperability argument. Google wasn’t trying to achieve compatibility with existing code (for which, you’re right, they’d have needed to take the whole set) but rather compatibility with existing developers. Arguably, that is still interoperability.
  - az226 6y ago
    I see your point. But because it would be interoperable with the developers and not the end users, so it’s still no dice for Google. The QWERTY keyboard is a good example of interoperability with end users (but not of copyright itself). So the courts would not give weight to that aspect.