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Google’s copying of the Java SE API was fair use [pdf]

• gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Oh my God. What a relief.
  • mrkstu 5y ago
    Yep. This case was an existential threat to multitudes of industries and the assumptions they were built on. The weird thing is it would of hurt Oracle as much as anyone. I have no clue how anyone w/any technical merit didn't understand that this was a footgun of the largest possible magnitude for them.
    • gjsman-1000 5y ago
      In my own mind, when CentOS died Oracle was saying you should move to "Oracle Unbreakable Linux"... which is a downstream clone of RHEL, just like CentOS was. Just one example of the hypocrisy.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • bryanlarsen 5y ago
        Even more egregiously, Oracle's whole existence is based off of copying the SQL API from IBM.
      • throwaway8581 5y ago
        It is uncontested that Oracle cloning RHEL is allowed by the license that RHEL is released under. They don't need a fair use ruling from the Supreme Court because they literally have a license that allows exactly what they did. The same could not be said for Google's actions in this case.
    • thedevelopnik 5y ago
      I had the opportunity once to talk to an IP lawyer for Oracle and brought this up. I specifically brought up the S3 compatibility of their cloud storage among other instances. His reply was “without admitting anything specific, how do you know we haven’t purchased private licenses for anything you just mentioned?”
      • throwaway3699 5y ago
        It's still silly. Imagine if you needed to purchase a license for the shape of plug that fits inside a standard plug socket - to build any appliance.
        • bobmalone123 5y ago
          Imagine if you had to pay a software developer 300K a year to design that API that you think it’s cool to steal.
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
          • throwaway3699 5y ago
            Someone had to design plug sockets too.
            • deleted 5y ago
              [deleted]
        • thedevelopnik 5y ago
          Oh yeah he and I still fundamentally disagreed, but it gave me some insight into Oracle’s position.
        • rodgerd 5y ago
          Plenty of good, cheap DACs built in China (e.g. Topping) have an HDMI-shaped plug (IIS) that supports PCM-over-not-HDMI which happens to be compatible with HDMI sources, but don't dare mention HDMI because they don't want to pull in an interlocking, price-gouging nonsense from the US entertainment industry. So you don't quite need a license for the shape of the plug, but you do need to pretend it's not something that it is.
    • coldpie 5y ago
      I'd really like it if we could kill Oracle somehow. They are easily the worst player in the technology industry.
      • kaba0 5y ago
        Based on what?
• whatshisface 5y ago
  Google's an LLC?
  • gjsman-1000 5y ago
    After a restructuring, Google is an LLC owned by Alphabet Inc. (the publicly listed organization).
• tyingq 5y ago
  The HN discussion from 2016 (Jury finds for Google): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11781053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11781053 From 2018 (Oracle revives matter via appeal): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16688521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16688521 Edit: Fixed, had written "Jury finds for Oracle", which was NOT what happened in 2016. Argh.
  • politelemon 5y ago
    I'm unfamiliar with the legal system (judicial system?). I had thought that the jury's findings were final. Am I understanding correctly that the case still went to the Supreme Court of the US, and now that court finds in favor of Google. What happens after this, more appeals or is this like a proper static const readonly final?
    • gjsman-1000 5y ago
      In the US, the Supreme Court is the static const readonly final. It's over. There is literally no route of appeal or any way Oracle can keep this case going without a whole new lawsuit. The Supreme Court can elect to make a ruling and then send it back to a smaller court _if they choose_ for final assessment, but they did not do that here, making this ruling definitive.
      • sircastor 5y ago
        > In the US, the Supreme Court is the static const readonly final This made me laugh out loud. Thanks
      • cowmoo728 5y ago
        Oracle (or some other company) can bring another case. It has to be different enough that it isn't immediately struck down based on precedent, but similar enough that a ruling would require appealing to the Supreme Court and force them to overturn or invalidate the Oracle v Google precedent. The chance of this happening is negligible, but this is basically the conservative plan for getting the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v Wade precedent.
• esarbe 5y ago
  I'm so relieved. This could have forced such dramatic changes in how we develop software. And any other decision would have been a crippling blow to FLOS software. Now if we only could get the SC to invalidate software patents in general.
  • ocdtrekkie 5y ago
    This is a large scale defeat of the GPL and dual licensing, so I'm not sure how this could be anything but a sad day for sustainable open source development. If you're big enough and have enough lawyers, there's no reason to license software you want to build on.
    • macspoofing 5y ago
      How so?
    • icegreentea2 5y ago
      How does this ruling interact with GPL?
      • billsix 5y ago
        Perhaps this https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP...
        • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
          That's a different situation though. You're then distributing something intended to link with readline -- not just implementing its API yourself but using its entire original implementation. What you could perhaps do is create your own implementation of the readline API distributed under a different license and then claim your program is intended to link against that, but how would you claim that if no such implementation exists? Whereas if you have to write your own readline implementation in order to use it then you still end up with a large incentive to avoid that by releasing your work under the GPL instead.
• teruakohatu 5y ago
  > "Google copied approximately 11,500 lines of declaring code from the API, which amounts to virtually all the declaring code needed to call up hundreds of different tasks. Those 11,500 lines, however, are only 0.4 percent of the entire API at issue, which consists of 2.86 million total lines. In considering “the amount and substantiality of the portion used” in this case, the 11,500 lines of code should be viewed as one small part of the considerably greater whole. As part of an interface, the copied lines of code are inextricably bound to other lines of code that are accessed by programmers. Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment." Sanity prevailed! This judgment could have had devastating consequences and turned software development into a copyright nightmare.
  • oconnor663 5y ago
    Question from a layman: Does "interoperability" as a concept have any legal relevance here? Like focusing on programmer skills seems kind of beside the point, which is really for two pieces of software to be able to interoperate.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      Also speaking as a layman, but yes. Fair use has, as one of its four factors, the purpose and character of the use, to which interoperability is of definite relevance. It explains -why- the API was reused, even if the internals are entirely different. Not because it saved Google work, or there was some sort of competitive edge against Java SE to be gained by doing so.
    • TinoDidriksen 5y ago
      Yes, reverse engineering for the purpose of interoperability is one of the things explicitly allowed by laws such as DMCA.
      • teraflop 5y ago
        The decision talks about "interoperability" as a general concept, but neither the DMCA nor reverse engineering is at all relevant to its legal reasoning.
• epaga 5y ago
  "The doctrine of “fair use” is flexible and takes account of changes in technology. Computer programs differ to some extent from many other copyrightable works because computer programs always serve a functional purpose. Because of these differences, fair use has an important role to play for computer programs by providing a context-based check that keeps the copyright monopoly afforded to computer programs within its lawful bounds." This is EXCELLENT news for anyone in software development. Yay for Fair Use.
  • jawns 5y ago
    > computer programs always serve a functional purpose The Court is apparently not familiar with much of my code :)
• The_rationalist 5y ago
  Now can they please use a modern jdk on Android? It's about time
  • quotemstr 5y ago
    They are using a modern JDK on Android. The standard library is literally OpenJDK, and the runtime is the excellent ART JVM, which has super-fast GC and tons of mobile-specific optimizations (like zygote space support and switching to a different GC when the app goes into the background). IMHO, you really don't want HotSpot on mobile. ART is good work.
    • vips7L 5y ago
      I think he's just referring to a modern version of Java the language, not ART vs HotSpot. I don't think anyone really cares which runtime is running.
      • The_rationalist 5y ago
        The runtime prevent the support for modern JVM features such as value types (see my comment above). Google might duplicate all that work (but how much late they will be before it divide the Java world? Switching to a unified jvm and improving it through collaboration is the way to go.
        • vips7L 5y ago
          But as the person I replied to, HotSpot doesn't perform as well for the use cases ART covers.
    • The_rationalist 5y ago
      I am talking about C2 JIT support and other sota GCs. ART has an increasingly growing technical debt. No support for constant dynamic so no support for the upcoming pattern matching. No support for sub 1ms GC No support for the already available Vector API. No support for value types. No support for generic specialization. No support for Loom. ART is NIH and support with Java and Kotlin will explode into two worlds, the Android obscolete world and the modern, feature complete and optimized world. ART has custom improvments? Fine that's good, now let's gradually port them to openjdk (or a light openjdk fork). No custom improvement is gonna outweight the need of interoperability (and the order of magnitude performance improvement from the above features) ART is an AOT so I wonder if the android team has considered switching to GraalVM instead of hotspot, the transition might be easier. Please Google, it's time to show technical excellence.
• andrewflnr 5y ago
  Oh, I forgot this little apocalypse was hanging over our heads. It's good to see some sanity.
  • caf 5y ago
    This made me wonder what gender 'apocalypse' has in French (feminine, it seems - la petit apocalypse),
  • gonzo41 5y ago
    And it's kinda nice to see it come to an end. I wonder if both google and oracle are looking at the bills from their lawyers and thinking about it like the destruction at the somme. It's great for software, it'll be an interesting documentary someday. And congratulations to all the lawyers for making a ton of money.
    • ma2rten 5y ago
      I doubt that it's a lot of money for these companies.
  • clankyclanker 5y ago
    I’m just grateful this decision didn’t come out 4 months ago. It would’ve gone the way of 2020, somehow.
• pjfin123 5y ago
  Yay!
• qalmakka 5y ago
  This is one of the most important legal decisions in the history of software. The US Supreme Court has basically just saved the whole software industry (and FOSS projects) from being wrecked by patent trolls.
  • dehrmann 5y ago
    I assume this means that Amazon can ignore the Elastic and Mongo licenses when building compatible implementations?
    • topicseed 5y ago
      So can other vendors with S3's api.
      • hutrdvnj 5y ago
        Now it's legally possible to SaaS MinIO and sell S3 storage to customers.
  • jahnu 5y ago
    At least in the US
    • typon 5y ago
      Which, for now, is the global hegemon in software and tech at large. Any US court decision is extremely important to the whole industry.
    • CarelessExpert 5y ago
      US copyright law and interpretation tends to get exported through trade deals and other forms of political and economic pressure.
      • tephra 5y ago
        While true, APIs have specifically not been copyrightable in the EU for some time, I'm not sure about the cad else in other countries and regions.
• ocdtrekkie 5y ago
  This is a pretty unfortunate ruling and I have some questions about the shoddy claims made in this document (the one suggesting Oracle benefitted from its platform being ripped off without license is particularly rich, especially considering it was the death warrant on Java as a mobile platform entirely, right before mobile became huge). But what can we expect from the fine folks behind Citizens United?
  • quotemstr 5y ago
    Upvoted because you shouldn't be downvoted into oblivion just for having an opinion contrary to the HN hivemind. It's okay to think Oracle should have won here. I disagree, but there are reasonable people on both sides.
    • Spivak 5y ago
      In thought Oracle should have won this case as well and the opinion basically affirmed the reasoning but went the other way. The basis for Oracle winning was that copying the Java API for interoperability with developers rather than for existing software was copying for Java’s beauty rather than being purely functional. Whenever this case came up on HN people outright refused to acknowledge that one’s intentions even mattered when copying an API.
      • danans 5y ago
        > copying for Java’s beauty rather than being purely functional How would "beauty" be defined here. In the context of copyright, it would seem to apply to aesthetic beauty, but I'm not sure that applies to code (despite all sorts of engineers using the metaphor for theirs or others work).
        • ocdtrekkie 5y ago
          I would imagine it would hinge on the simplicity/elegance of the organized structure of the APIs? We tend to prescribe the term beauty to language features that are easier to use and implement in a novel way compared to the languages that came before.
• mindcrime 5y ago
  This appears to be the "money quote": We reach the conclusion that in this case, where Google reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, Google’s copying of the Sun Java API was a fair use of that material as a matter of law. Also, while I hate to just repeat things that have already been said, I feel compelled to say "What a relief!" because this would have been a complete disaster if they had gotten this decision wrong. In fact, I'm not sure "complete disaster" is a strong enough phrase to reflect what it would have meant for the software industry if this had come down the other way. So getting this looming disaster out of the way is a tremendous relief.
  • BoorishBears 5y ago
    I'm glad for the verdict but this is such bullshit. Google implemented exactly enough to create the illusion of letting people use their Java talents then dragged their feet with a half broken out-of-date language environment. And they did all this to save money, not some sort of noble rebellion or clever hack. > Sun offered a licensing deal of between US$30 and 50 million. Schmidt said Google would have paid for that license, but they were concerned that Sun had also requested some shared control of Android along with the fee. A pittance for Google but that vague "some control" sounds really bad right? Well fortunately there's a history here and we know from past licensing deals (J++) this control is enforcing interoperability with other Java implementation. And of course Oracle spells that out pretty easily: > Oracle states that Sun refused because Google’s intention was essentially to fork Java to a Google version of the language, and to prevent it being inter-operable with other versions, an idea which was “anathema” to the “write once run anywhere” basis of the language. Google got a cheap license and the only stipulation was "don't fuck up the Java ecosystem by having your OS run Java-but-not-really" but that was too much for them and exactly what they ended up doing! I don't know why people are acting like this is some victory of open source. Maybe a victory for open source, but championed by a greedy corporation that fragmented the Java ecosystem for years. I wish Oracle could have taken another angle here, they deserved damages from Google for this. Google literally pulled a J++ and got away with it.
    • 5y ago
• mycall 5y ago
  > Computer programs differ to some extent from many other copyrightable works because computer programs always serve a functional purpose. So a computer program instructs processors to do things while books do not necessarily instruct neurons to do things. This seems like a leap. I could write a book with NOP for every word or I could write a program with NOP loops. Are these really instruction to do things? Like so, books do instruct people (aka knowledge).
  • HumblyTossed 5y ago
    Yes a NOP is an instruction to do something. It tells the cpu to not change state for a period of time equal to how long it takes to execute the NOP.
    • mycall 5y ago
      How about in a higher level language? C program that is all semicolons vs. a book of all semicolons? Neither computer nor human is any more knowledgeable after reading it.
      • HumblyTossed 5y ago
        I haven't compiled a C program in years so I'm honestly not sure what an all ; program would do. But assuming it would just do nothing, well that is still an instruction to the computer. Delays are very meaningful. Serial communication is a great example.
• samgranieri 5y ago
  Thank God.
• abhv 5y ago
  Which of Breyer's clerks drafted this? They clearly understand many tech issues and I hope they find their place on some Federal circuit to herald an era of logic in tech law. "Google’s limited copying of the API is a transformative use. Google copied only what was needed to allow programmers to work in a different computing environment without discarding a portion of a familiar programming language. Google’s purpose was to create a different task-related system for a different computing environment (smartphones) and to create a platform—the Android platform—that would help achieve and popularize that objective. " ... "Here the record showed that Google’s new smartphone platform is not a market substitute for Java SE." ... "Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment. " ... "the Court concludes that Google’s copying of the API to reimplement a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, constituted a fair use of that material as a matter of law. "
  • ethbr0 5y ago
    "Held: Google’s copying of the Java SE API, which included only those lines of code that were needed to allow programmers to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, was a fair use of that material as a matter of law." If the un-italicized is the new test, that's probably the most reasonable thing I'm going to read this month. And it's only the 5th.
    • gred 5y ago
      They didn't establish a new test, they applied the existing 4 tests / factors and found that they indicated fair use. The first 2 or 3 pages contain a description of the 4 tests and how they were found to apply in this case.
      • ethbr0 5y ago
        Not entirely. Per my understanding, this is a fairly big shift: "The fair use question is a mixed question of fact and law. Reviewing courts should appropriately defer to the jury’s findings of underlying facts, but the ultimate question whether those facts amount to a fair use is a legal question for judges to decide de novo. This approach does not violate the Seventh Amendment’s prohibition on courts reexamining facts tried by a jury, because the ultimate question here is one of law, not fact. The “right of trial by jury” does not include the right to have a jury resolve a fair use defense." Or to put it another way, convincing a jury that something is or isn't fair use is very different than convincing precedent-bound judges, especially with this on the books as the controlling case. In final impact, it seems like an incredibly good judgement for everyone: you can prove to a jury what was / wasn't copied, and then a judge will apply a standard fair use test over those facts, with a tendency towards allowing transformative use. Legal protections against copying, room for progress, and (most importantly!) more certainty and standardization in how cases are decided.
• Bluecobra 5y ago
  I am glad Oracle didn't win. It seems to me that they bought Sun just to sue Google. I'm still bitter over for how they destroyed Sun... it's a shame that they didn't have a better steward.
  • The_rationalist 5y ago
    Oracle is making a lot of innovation in openjdk and graalvm. They have much better engineers than if e.g Google had bought sun.
    • Jonnax 5y ago
      Ah yes. The company that forbids people from benchmarking their database must be a bastion of good engineering.
      • The_rationalist 5y ago
        This does not generalize to the openjdk team. Google team characteristics tends to generalize more.
  • kasperni 5y ago
    Sun drove themself into the ground. And at least in the Java world they have been excellent stewards. The platform is moving forward again.
• ve55 5y ago
  I had forgotten about this for quite awhile, given the pace at which these cases operate at. The great sigh of relief I was unexpectedly gifted this morning upon seeing this at #1 was a nice surprise. Very important precedent, good job.
• curt15 5y ago
  "(e) The fact that computer programs are primarily functional makes it difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in that technological world." So the opinion effectively preserves the status quo in the software industry while sidestepping the question of API copyrightability.
  • mindcrime 5y ago
    True, but it's such a strong precedent in favor of copying API's being "fair use" that it at least partly moots the more general question of "are API's copyrightable in the first place." I think this was a good decision all in all. AIUI, the SCOTUS try to limit the scope of their decisions as much as possible, to avoid over-generalization.
    • Spivak 5y ago
      I don’t think it moots the point at all. * Google’s API copying can’t be fair use if they weren’t copyrightable in the first place. * If you do copy an API because of it’s beauty and not for either interoperability with software or interoperability with developers then it seems that you would run afoul of copyright.
      • mindcrime 5y ago
        If you do copy an API because of it’s beauty and not for either interoperability with software or interoperability with developers then it seems that you would run afoul of copyright. That's why I said it partly moots the issue, not completely. Yes, you could conceivably still run afoul of copyright in some cases, but at first blush, this seems like a precedent that will make it very unlikely that that would happen. I guess time will tell, but that's my initial perception. IANAL, of course.
        • CarelessExpert 5y ago
          > If you do copy an API because of it’s beauty and not for either interoperability with developers then it seems that you would run afoul of copyright. So don't do that? Why would you copy an API save to be inoperable? If it's just to duplicate someone else's design, I think I'm okay with that potentially being a copyright violation. What downside am I missing?
• jblz 5y ago
  From the dissent: "In the 1990s, Oracle created a programming language called Java..." Sun Microsystems was acquired in 2010... I guess I should give Thomas the benefit of the doubt that he intended the statement to apply to Oracle's owned IP & not be a historical account of the language's creation and creators, but this rubbed me the wrong way.
  • jakewalker 5y ago
    He addresses this in footnote 1 on the same page, though. "A different company, Sun, created the library. But because Oracle later purchased Sun, for simplicity I refer to both companies as Oracle."
    • jblz 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing that out -- I skipped over that first footnote. On my screen, it's on the previous page from the quote I posted (for what it's worth).
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • zzleeper 5y ago
    Not surprised at all the Thomas and Alito are in that dissent..
    • flumpcakes 5y ago
      I was under the impression that a dissent has to be written, even if they all agree in the majority opinion/ruling?
      • gjsman-1000 5y ago
        You also forget that a justice might feel more comfortable with ruling in opposition so that he/she can write the dissent, but if his/her vote was a swing vote, the justice might have second thoughts about that. It's easy to vote in opposition when you know it doesn't matter - and then, hey, you get to write the position for the losing side.
• imadethis 5y ago
  Page 44 has Thomas’s dissent with Alito concurring. Worth a read as well, even just to see the opposing arguments.
  • shirleyquirk 5y ago
    Designing an API is a creative work not unlike that of an architect, I see the merit in the dissent pointing out, e.g "there may have been only one way for Google to copy the lines of declaring code, but there were innumerable ways for Oracle to write them. Certainly, Apple and Microsoft managed to create their own declaring code."
    • joelkevinjones 5y ago
      I'm not sure what Thomas was referring to. What does "create their own declaring code" mean? Did they do some kind of white room implementation where they typed in the contents of a javadoc web site? Did they modify the name of parameters?
      • petters 5y ago
        Swift and C#?
• _Microft 5y ago
  Is this a final judgement? Is it over now?
  • thedevelopnik 5y ago
    Yes. There is no appellate court above the Supreme Court. The only way things could change now is if Congress/President passed a new law, and I don’t think API copyrights are near the top of the list.
    • thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > There is no appellate court above the Supreme Court. That is true. > The only way things could change now is if Congress/President passed a new law That isn't true at all; the Supreme Court is free to change the law by itself. Someone could sue over the same question and get a different result overruling this one.
      • bryanlarsen 5y ago
        Suing over the same question wouldn't get very far. The best approach would be suing over a closely related question. See coomoo728's analogy to Roe v. Wade: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699621 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699621
      • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
        They are free to change their mind, but are very reticent to do so. What compelling reason would there be to revisit this that could possibly change the outcome?
      • Der_Einzige 5y ago
        And this has happened hundreds of times already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_States_Supreme_Court_decisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_State...
  • nikanj 5y ago
    Time for Oracle to pull out the Sun patent portfolio and start over.
• f-serif 5y ago
  I don't understand why people uses such stupid font style -_-
  • jraph 5y ago
    uBlock origin has a convenient font blocker, for what is worth. Saves many kilobytes, and readability.
    • kube-system 5y ago
      It's not going to do much for a PDF :)
      • jraph 5y ago
        Oh, shout. xD Actually, I've seen uBlock Origin's font blocker actually break font rendering on PDFs in Firefox in the past (maybe still today?).
• thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  Had the ruling gone in Oracle's favor I can imagine some greedy company trying to procedurally-generate every API and copyright them all similar to this project which tried to copyright all musical melodies: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/music-copyright-algorithm-lawsuit-damien-riehl-a9364536.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... In the case of the music project, it was for the protection of the community, but I can imagine such a system being used selfishly for software APIs.
  • luckylion 5y ago
    Can you copyright generated things? You probably could copyright the way you're generating it, but I doubt you have a legal standing about the generated text or melody itself.
    • thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but I don't see why not. Have you ever used code generation as part of software you have built? Is there any reason why generated code could not be copyrighted as part of a larger system? For example, suppose I define a data model for a public-facing API and then generate SDKs in various popular programming languages to interact with the public-facing API. If I were a major corporation that owned such a public-facing API, then I would expect that the generated SDKs would carry the major corporation's copyright. edit: Another example of generated code would be the code generated by lexer analyzer generator and parser generator tools such as lex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lex_(software)), flex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_(lexical_analyser_generator) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_(lexical_analyser_generat...), YACC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Yacc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Yacc), and bison (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Bison). If you create commercial software that includes YACC-generated code, wouldn't the generated code be copyrightable?
      • CydeWeys 5y ago
        > I am not a lawyer, but I don't see why not. The involvement of actual human creativity is required for a work to be copyrightable.
• javajosh 5y ago
  Does anyone have a good estimate of what this case cost Oracle and Google, especially in terms of legal fees, and where that money went ultimately?
  • pm90 5y ago
    The money goes into lawyers fees. Because of the way this decision went, I’m sure Google considers it a worthy investment and Oracle considers it a temporary setback as it pursues other extortion schemes using Sun’s Patents. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a specific division of lawyers dedicated to finding novel ways of extorting wealth using Patents; this would likely just be one of the cases they were working on. Come to think of it, from Oracles perspective it was definitely worth a shot, to throw a few millions (if that?) with a chance of winning billions.
    • danans 5y ago
      > worth a shot, to throw a few millions (if that?) Teams of high end lawyers over about a decade? Probably at least 10s of millions.
    • upbeat_general 5y ago
      It was definitely more than a few millions. Still might have been worth it but lawyers are expensive.
    • phonon 5y ago
      > as it pursues other extortion schemes using Sun’s Patents. They bought Sun 12 years ago...not much time left to pursue that...
  • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    I don't know, but it was money well spent and we should thank them for causing this important point of law to be clarified.
    • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
• marcodiego 5y ago
  Great! This could open a very dangerous precedent. Time to end this one now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26692575
• curt15 5y ago
  "The record also showed that Java SE’s copyright holder would benefit from the reimplementation of its interface into a different market....the jury also heard evidence that Sun foresaw a benefit from the broader use of the Java programming language in a new platform like Android, as it would further expand the network of Java-trained programmers...and because there are two markets at issue, programmers learning the Java language to work in one market (smartphones) are then able to bring those talents to the other market (laptops)." The benefits of reimplementing APIs always flow both ways. I'm glad SCOTUS recognised this point.
  • kaba0 5y ago
    Except that Android is a fkup of “Java” that is so old that repositories have to create an android and a normal version. Kotlin spread into android development pretty much because android java is so bad. That is exactly what was the “damage” Oracle sued for.
    • smsm42 5y ago
      I kinda doubt Oracle sued for 9 billions damages because Google tarnished Oracle's image with their bad Java implementation.
• Crontab 5y ago
  Thank goodness.
• jxf 5y ago
  While the result is a big relief, I think it's not as decisive as I'm noticing some headlines (and commenters) are claiming. One of the big open questions is "are APIs copyrightable?" The court skirted that question, and instead focused on whether it was fair use: > To decide no more than is necessary to resolve this case, the Court assumes for argument’s sake that the copied lines can be copyrighted, and focuses on whether Google’s use of those lines was a “fair use.” That said, this case does establish a precedent that if your copying of an API is primarily for purposes of matching an interface so that developers can reimplement it, you're in fair use territory: > Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment. I'll count that as a win, on balance.
  • pdoconnell 5y ago
    In general the court seems to try to go to the easiest decision point in a case. The copyrightability of an API is less relevant if the user being sued should win regardless because of fair use. This is better than a plurality decision where there's multiple reasonings on API copywrite that make future decisions difficult. Here at least the court gives guidance on how to think about evaluating fair use in this context, which lower courts can apply.
  • kyrra 5y ago
    Thomas's dissent explicitly points this out. Without diving into "are APIs copyrightable?", the majority are skipping what should have been evaluated first before saying if they were fair-use or not.
    • GavinMcG 5y ago
      Why should it have been evaluated first? I understand the intuition you're getting at: logically, the first question could make the second irrelevant. But if the second question resolves the issue even when the first is construed in favor of the other party, what's the rationale for demanding the court focus on the first question?
• tantalor 5y ago
  From the dissent: > The Copyright Act expressly protects computer code. It recognizes that a “computer program” is protected by copyright... And it defines “‘computer program’” as “a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.” §101. That definition clearly covers declaring code—sets of statements that indirectly perform computer functions by triggering prewritten implementing code. Thomas seems confused here. An API (declaring code) is not a computer program. A computer cannot execute declaring code - by definition - because it is missing the implementation. Declaring code does not "indirectly perform computer functions". Declaring code does not perform anything. It provides a reference, nothing more, for a compiler to match one computer program (the API client) to another (the API implementation).
  • tantalor 5y ago
    This argument is hard to swallow: > declaring code would satisfy the general test for copyrightability.. they are expressed in “words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols It is common knowledge that mathematical formulae & equations, which are also expressed in words, numbers, and symbols, do not have copyright protection. > Copyright protection is therefore not available for... mathematical principles; formulas or algorithms https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf > public static int MaxNum (int x, int y, int z) This is literally a mathematical formula, hence does not have copyright protection.
    • throwaway8581 5y ago
      This is not a persuasive argument because, by your logic, function implementations are also mathematical formulas and everyone agrees that they are copyrightable.
      • cjbprime 5y ago
        The copyrightable part of them is the creative decision making used to organize the workings of the function itself, not the formulas. Two functions could have identical algorithmic performance, but be stylistically and semantically different, have been written independently, and neither would infringe on the copyright of the other.
• smnrchrds 5y ago
  First of all, very good news. Second of all, what does this mean for Fuchsia, Dart, and related projects? I always assumed they were a hedge against Google having to pay exorbitant licensing fees to Oracle. Now that the threat has disappeared, will those projects be sunsetted too?
  • rileyteige 5y ago
    Given the investment going into Flutter for cross-platform mobile (and now desktop and web) development, I would be very surprised to see Dart get Google Readered.
    • johnnycerberus 5y ago
      To be honest, the investment into Flutter pales in comparison to Android (mobile, TV, ChromeOS, etc.). Flutter has always been a side project.
  • usbfingers 5y ago
    Agreed, very good news though I'm left with the same question. It doesn't inspire that much confidence, but the recent embrace of Flutter from Canonical leaves me hopeful even if Google did drop from active lang / framework development, it wouldn't be left to dry.
• bryanlarsen 5y ago
  It's interesting reading Thomas' dissent. As per typical Thomas appears to be arguing that it's the letter of the law that matters, whereas it's the majority opinion that the motivations and substance of the law are primary. Hackers and programmers tend to try and read the law like computer code to be "hacked" and exploited based on the letter of the law. So you'd expect us to be more sympathetic to Thomas' view. So this is a great example to smack hackers with when they try and "hack" the law, treating it like code rather than something more human. It's a great example because this is a case where the majority is obviously the "right" decision to any true code hacker.
  • quotemstr 5y ago
    I'm normally with the textualists on the court on the question of how we interpret the law, but in the case of copyright, the concept of "fair use" is specifically intended as an "extension point" where the courts could do what seemed right in changing circumstances. I like strongly typed languages too, but there are legitimate uses for void*.
    • ghaff 5y ago
      That's a very good summary. This is a case where there probably is no legally "correct" decision based on the law/precedent. It comes down to fair use and to what degree you can reasonably extend it to this case. For most people reading this, the decision is the "right" one. But I'm not sure to what degree one side or the other is better supported as a matter of law/precedent.
      • gfodor 5y ago
        I strongly agree with the outcome but the cost in the other direction is good API design is a creative process. If you sit down and design a kick-ass API for a year, another person who re-implements is inheriting that design, and its benefits, for free. I do wonder if another case will wind its way up one day where the defendant lifted the API not for interoperability but because it was a clean or clever interface. (Seems a bit far fetched but would round out fair use further I think.)
• deleted 5y ago
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• curt15 5y ago
  "On the other hand, Google’s copying helped Google makea vast amount of money from its Android platform. And enforcement of the Sun Java API copyright might give Oracle a significant share of these funds. It is important, how-ever, to consider why and how Oracle might have become entitled to this money. When a new interface, like an API or a spreadsheet program, first comes on the market, it may attract new users because of its expressive qualities, such as a better visual screen or because of its superior functionality. As time passes, however, it may be valuable for a different reason, namely, because users, including programmers, are just used to it. They have already learned how to work with it. See Lotus Development Corp., 49 F. 3d, at 821 " Interesting to see SCOTUS citing Lotus v Borland, which was originally deadlocked at 4-4 (although Breyer seems to have voted in favour of Lotus back then). Does this elevate the precedential value of Lotus?
• Silhouette 5y ago
  From a quick scan, the majority opinion here seems reasonable. I suspect it is what almost everyone working in programming would have considered the "right" answer. The dissent is worrying, though. For a pivotal case that would have had a profound adverse effect on the future of software development had it been decided the other way, there seemed to be a disturbing lack of appreciation of the fundamental issues in play, particularly the practical reasons that programmers separate interface and implementation and the implications of this for interoperability.
• protomyth 5y ago
  I would imagine if the ruling went the other way, IBM might want to talk to all the BIOS companies. Luckily, that didn't happen.
  • oblio 5y ago
    IBM would probably want to talk to 99% of computing companies out there, not just BIOS companies :-)
    • bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Including Oracle, since their copying of IBM's SQL API is what the whole company is based on.
      • jcranmer 5y ago
        And Oracle is now copying AWS's API to try to enter the cloud market. (This was explicitly brought up in one of the amici briefs).
        • jpdb 5y ago
          Are you referring to the S3 API? I believe the S3 API is explicitly licensed under Apache. Disclaimer: I was previously employed by Amazon and currently Google. Opinions are my own, I'm not a lawyer, etc.
          • jcranmer 5y ago
            And OpenJDK is GPLv2 with a classpath exception. So why is Google unable to use Java's API here while Oracle able to use Amazon's API?
            • tephra 5y ago
              IIRC (this case has been going on for way to long) they didn't cope the GPLed version of the code (oracle/sun had another proprietary version).
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• D13Fd 5y ago
  I love this outcome. But what are people's thoughts on the analogy between a software platform and a "factory floor"? That seems wrong to me; the "factory" is more like the IDE, not the platform.
• victor106 5y ago
  I love how the Us supreme court judgements are written using low level terminology that most anyone can understand with little prior knowledge. Some countries use legal and complicated jargon that its hard to follow.
  • openasocket 5y ago
    Based on my conversations with my wife, who is a lawyer, that plain language can be a little bit deceptive. While lawyers love their jargon and latin phrases, there's also a lot of very specific terms of art that sound like regular language. Terms like "reasonable" carry a lot of connotations and context in a legal decision that you don't get from the word alone. But yeah, I agree that these legal decisions are really easy for a layman to understand, even if I might miss some of the nuances.
  • coldpie 5y ago
    We're getting pretty far off topic, but I love this article: https://loweringthebar.net/2017/02/octopoid-embrace.html https://loweringthebar.net/2017/02/octopoid-embrace.html
  • bitwize 5y ago
    Supreme Court decisions are the next-best thing to black-letter law. It is important to clarify what the law has been decided to be, once and for all. Lower-court rulings have no shortage of legal jargon and terms of art with meanings that conflict with everyday meanings of those same words, because they're just part of the sausage making that is drafting and interpretation of the law. SCOTUS rulings can have these too, as the other responder indicated, but there's just fewer of them (and more clarifying language where necessary) because again, a SCOTUS ruling is a proclamation to the people, once and for all, of what the law has been settled to be.
    • kemitchell 5y ago
      > It is important to clarify what the law has been decided to be, once and for all. > because again, a SCOTUS ruling is a proclamation to the people, once and for all, of what the law has been settled to be. That is not how our common-law legal system works. Even setting decisions that the court has later explicitly overruled aside, when the court announces a new rule, that rule is not totally complete and set in stone. Later decisions frequently flesh out, revise, or reinterpret prior decisions.
• Andrex 5y ago
  Just exhaled the biggest sigh of relief I've ever had when reading the title. Holy cow. Thank fucking god.
• flowerlad 5y ago
  This has impact beyond APIs. The Supreme Court says copying User Interface is fair use. Excerpts: The nature of the work at issue favors fair use. The copied lines of code are part of a “user interface” that provides a way for programmers to access prewritten computer code through the use of simple commands. As a result, this code is different from many other types of code, such as the code that actually instructs the computer to execute a task. As part of an interface, the copied lines are inherently bound together with uncopyrightable ideas (the overall organization of the API) and the creation of new creative expression (the code independently written by Google). Unlike many other computer programs, the value of the copied lines is in significant part derived from the investment of users (here computer programmers) who have learned the API’s system. Given these differences, application of fair use here is unlikely to undermine the general copyright protection that Congress provided for computer programs.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    You're reading too much into that. The user in this case is the programmer using the API, or even the code that uses the API. It's doesn't generalize to end user interfaces.
    • flowerlad 5y ago
      The same principle applies, and for the same reasons mentioned in the portions I excerpted above.
• AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  For better or worse, the same arguments ( "API is copyrightable" ) is what was used in the past to prevent 98's Microsoft from doing embrace-extend-extinguish to Java with their "JavaVM with P/Invoke'd Win32 API". The idea in that case was that when you try to implement something identical to the Java language and standard library, it doesn't matter if you call it Java or "Visual J++"; you are still implementing Java and thus in order to be able to do that you need to agree to Sun's terms (in that time, it was that your implementation needed to pass a testsuite and among other things needed to be "write once run everywhere", something the MS one definitely didn't as it was offering lots of non-portable extensions). Now to my understanding the opinion here is that literally Sun was trying to do the same to Google (forcing them to ensure their implementation was compatible with Sun's, including being able to run Android software under Sun's JVM), which would have quite put a setback to Android at least as it was at that point (could you imagine Android forced to go with Swing?). If I try to be fair, I find that in fact Android did succesfully pull the embrace-extend-extinguish strategy that MS was prevented to by legal reasons, and as a consequence basically killed Java on the mobile space (though Oracle has a lot of blame to share here). Perhaps the tides turned and now Google is seen as the lesser evil when compared to Oracle, while in the past Sun was seen as the lesser evil compared to MS. But is there any objective reason why the two rulings should have gone differently? I am actually completely undecided about how I would have liked this ruling to go. I can see some of the repercussions of being able to copyright "header files" way too dangerous to ignore, but on the other side I have already seen the consequences of not being able to, and they are also bad. Alien vs predator...
  • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    The issue is that what Sun was trying to do to Microsoft was equally wrong, but people didn't care as much because Microsoft was more obviously the villain. The real answer is that copyright is the wrong tool to go after what Microsoft did and the correct tool for that is antitrust. EEE is anti-competitive even if copying an API is fair use.
  • jeswin 5y ago
    There's a huge difference. Microsoft was already a monopoly on desktops (and was relying on that dominance to EEE) when that happened, while in Google's case the smartphone industry was nascent.
• mtgx 5y ago
  > Google had appealed a 2018 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington reviving the suit Once again the CAFC was dead wrong in its maximalist IP ruling.
• _the_inflator 5y ago
  Ok, so what is Oracle's next move then?
  • dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    This is the end of the road, unless they can get Congress to change the law, of course. But they have 0% chance of that.
• throwaway8581 5y ago
  The interesting question is how broad this fair use ruling is. According to the Supreme Court's other fair use cases, fair use is highly fact-specific and therefore case-specific. What kinds of actions and motivations by Google could have led to a determination that the use was not fair? Or is Embrace/Extend/Extinguish as practiced by the big tech companies now always protected by fair use?
  • jcranmer 5y ago
    The centerpoint of the analysis is recognizing that declaring code is different from implementing code. From this key distinction, it pretty much follows that most copying of declaring code that does not also copy implementing code is inevitably fair use, so it can effectively be argued that copying APIs is inherently fair use. Kind of like how we say that commentary or parody is inherently fair use--it's always case-specific, but there are broad categories where you're almost always going to agree that it's fair use.
  • kemitchell 5y ago
    That's exactly the question. We see the majority trying to preserve flexibility in fair use throughout, even going so far as to head off arguments that this decision affects others: > We do not say that these questions are always relevant to the application of fair use, not even in the world of computer programs. Nor do we say that these questions are the only questions a court might ask. > The fact that computer programs are primarily functional makes it difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in that technological world. ... In doing so here, we have not changed the nature of those concepts. We do not overturn or modify our earlier cases involving fair use. ... Rather, we here recognize that applications of a copyright doctrine such as fair use has long proved a cooperative effort of Legislatures and courts, and that Congress, in our view, intended that it so continue. We see Thomas leading this question in dissent: > Because the majority's reasoning would undermine copyright protection for so many products long understood to be protected, I understand the majority's holding as a good-for-declaring-code-only precedent. Fair use is a mishmash of vague, impressionistic factors and a long list of cases from which to argue by analogy. It's not sharp-lines law. It's finger painting. Which is why lawyers so rarely recommend that people rely on fair use in any really meaningful way, outside areas where there have been a lot of court decisions, or where strong industry norms have evolved between repeat players.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  Makes me wonder how much Goldstein & Russell get paid to win a case like this. Worth every cent, I assume.
• splithalf 5y ago
  This will be great for developing nations.
• minusSeven 5y ago
  So does this ruling actually mean anything or can Oracle challenge this too somewhere else?
  • flyingfences 5y ago
    It's the Supreme Court of the United States; there's no higher court for this case to go to -- it's final. Oracle could launch a new case but it would have to rely on entirely different merits. If Oracle did have such other grounds for a suit, they would have included them in this case.
• tpush 5y ago
  The comments on this case always seem a bit confused to me. APIs have been copyrightable (in the US) since 2014(or 15, not sure). This ruling only affects the fair use judgement, and makes no further statement on the question of copyright; meaning APIs are still subject to copyright.
  • jcranmer 5y ago
    The copyrightability of APIs goes back to the "structure, sequence, and organization" being copyrightable decision back in (checks Wikipedia) 1986. The application since then has been inconsistent. Essentially, there's a concept called "thin copyright" which recognizes that some copyrightable things only receive minimal protection. The canonical example here is a phone books--phone books are copyrightable, but they mostly contain non-copyrightable information (lists of phone numbers), so most copying will essentially be fair use or free. Breyer's decision explicitly avoids deciding whether or not the SSO being copyrightable is good law, but it does essentially provide that it provides only thin copyright.
• pkulak 5y ago
  > In this way, the declaring code’s shortcut function is similar to a gas pedal in a car that tells the car to move faster or the QWERTY keyboard on a typewriter that calls up a certain letter when you press a particular key. As those analogies demonstrate, one can think of the declaring code as part of an interface between human beings and a machine. I love this analogy, and I'm going to use it to describe this case from now on. If I have a great idea for a new keyboard, maybe great new clicky keys or something, I have to make it QWERTY. I can't just come up with some random key ordering. And it has nothing to do with how good or bad QWERTY is as an idea. It's just that QWERTY happens to be what people have skills in.
  • anonymouse008 5y ago
    Actually, I find this a bit underpowered. The whole idea is that the invention (in this case the API design or QWERTY in your example) is so powerful that it becomes a 'utility' - so Java's implementation was so powerful it really should have been 'patented' not copyrighted. Then after 20 years, you can take the true 'utility' of the API design from Java to the commons. And yes, if ease of use will be a differentiator why people like Apple (whether it's right or wrong), then so is the ability to learn is an attribute to be protected from theft. I say all this seeing exactly where Swift is heading, and probably why Apple created the language that will run their unified APIs... because there's no other way to join except through their Swift gates.
    • sangnoir 5y ago
      > The whole idea is that the invention (in this case the API design or QWERTY in your example) is so powerful that it becomes a 'utility' - so Java's implementation was so powerful it really should have been 'patented' not copyrighted. The majority's argument was that utility is not imbued by the maker (Oracle), but by 3rd parties (programmers) adopting it. Patenting an API is a good way of scaring people away from using it - good luck with that.
• lvass 5y ago
  So does this mean one can already interface with a GPL program/library and ignore it's license? Is this the end of the GPL dual-license business model? https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL https://github.com/JoshCheek/clisp/blob/master/doc/Why-CLISP...
  • ajayyy 5y ago
    No, only if you write your own implementation. Google rewrote the Java API from scratch* except for using the same method signatures. * Some small functions were directly copied, but nothing major
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• greg7mdp 5y ago
  Thomas and Alito dissented - these two are always on the wrong side of history.
• exabrial 5y ago
  Sanity prevails. This is incredibly important for _literally every programming language_!
• crazypython 5y ago
  "The fourth statutory factor focuses upon the “effect” of the copying in the “market for or value of the copyrighted work.” §107(4). Here the record showed that Google’s new smartphone platform is not a market substitute for Java SE. The record also showed that Java SE’s copyright holder would benefit from the reimplementation of its interface into a different market. "
• jkingsbery 5y ago
  I 100% agree that this is the right outcome. Any other outcome would be a nightmare for software developers and would inhibit the development of products. But the dissent raises an interesting point. I think it shows how the crafting of legislation by people who are wholly ignorant of technology can create problems. While programmers recognize the difference between an API and it's implementation, Thomas makes the interesting point that the relevant legislation does not (page 4 of the dissent): > Copyright law generally protects works of authorship. Patent law generally protects inventions or discoveries. A library of code straddles these two categories. It is highly functional like an invention; yet as a writing, it is also a work of authorship. Faced with something that could fit in either space, Congress chose copyright, and it included declaring code in that protection. > The Copyright Act expressly protects computer code. It recognizes that a “computer program” is protected by copyright. See 17 U. S. C. §§109(b), 117, 506(a). And it defines “‘computer program’” as “a set of statements or instructions to be used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a certain result.” §101. That definition clearly covers declaring code—sets of statements that indirectly perform computer functions by triggering prewritten implementing code. While it clearly is in the Court's prerogative to interpret law, there seems to be a pretty good case that the court didn't provide an interpretation for a gap in the law, it instead fixed a law that didn't make sense.
  • curt15 5y ago
    The court made no holding on whether APIs can be copyrighted. "We shall assume, but purely for argument’s sake, that the entire Sun Java API falls within the definition of that which can be copy-righted. "
    • jkingsbery 5y ago
      Yes, a good point, it does. Breyer's opinion does say the court is arguing that the API is copy-righted, but used under fair use (as opposed to not copy-righted, in which case fair use doesn't make sense). But my point about what seems to be the main distinction making it copy-right-but-fair-use is the declaration vs. implementation concern, a distinction that logically exists (so I think the outcome is correct!), but does not seem to legally exist.
• tyingq 5y ago
  This seems to change part of the debate on "Extracting the abstract syntax tree from GCC" that happened here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26590524 Specifically, this thread about copying the readline API: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26606328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26606328 Stallman's contention that a judge would look unfavorably on cloning the API signature because it could be viewed as subterfuge...seems very weakened here, if copying an API is fair use. I suppose this also gives companies like Amazon a green light for clones of GPL software exposing an API that's identical.
  • monocasa 5y ago
    Yeah, but even Stallman's opinion and understanding on the matter has changed over time (that was one of the first GPL enforcement actions). IIRC, FSF was one of the amicus briefs in favor of Google's position. They want to be able to replace proprietary software with compatible, open source clones piece by piece. In fact a good chunk of the case law cited today hadn't even hit the courts yet at the time Stallman made that statement.
• mikevm 5y ago
  So what does this mean for the future of Java, now that Oracle won't be able to milk Google with licensing fees?
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  Judge William Alsup learned to code for this case, and was therefore able to avoid a lot of the BS being peddled around the significance of some of the code: > The argument centered on a function called rangeCheck. ... It was in Oracle’s interest to play up the significance of rangeCheck as much as possible, and David Boies, Oracle’s lawyer, began to argue that Google had copied rangeCheck so that it could take Android to market more quickly. Judge Alsup was not buying it. > “I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this trial,” said the judge. “But, I have done and still do a lot of programming myself in other languages. I have written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times or more. I could do it. You could do it. It is so simple.” https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-google-judge-william-alsup-interview-waymo-uber https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/19/16503076/oracle-vs-googl...
  • mlindner 5y ago
    That judge had no part of this decision though.
    • Spooky23 5y ago
      This stuff is very nuanced, especially when the stakes are high. SCOTUS rules on the legal and fundamental matter, not the subject. So if the attorneys for one side or the other are able to manipulate the judge into making a weak ruling (even one not in their favor), the appeals courts rulings will be impacted. In this case, the trial judge went above and beyond to avoid that kind of bullshit.
  • distribot 5y ago
    I just took a look at the rangeCheck: https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ https://majadhondt.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/googles-9-lines/ Is this example correct? Can someone explain to me how this: if (toIndex > arrayLen) is correct? If the array length is say 5, and toIndex is 5, that should still throw an index out of bounds exception, right? But it would be acceptable here.
    • 5y ago
• mjh2539 5y ago
  All thanks be to God
• ccleve 5y ago
  I like the outcome from a public policy perspective. The policy the court has imposed is good for the industry. But let's make no mistake -- this is legislating from the bench. The wholesale expropriation of an API is not the same thing as taking a small snippet of a copyrighted work for analysis, commentary, criticism, or scholarship. It is core the value of the work. Indeed, it's the most important part, because it defines the functionality of the product. It is what the customer sees and interacts with. It is the means by which the customer gets value. You can completely swap out the backend behind the API and the customer will still get value. Change the API and the value goes away. From a legal perspective, this decision is 100% wrong. The plain language of the law makes that clear. What should have happened here is that Congress should have passed an amendment to copyright law allowing for fair use of an API. They should have done so after a free and full debate, with due consideration to all economic consequences. It is not for our black-robed, un-elected overlords to make this decision.
  • mrkstu 5y ago
    Let's take the 'on a computer' portion out of it. If I specify that my company takes orders that only have certain header columns and must have specific format in certain fields on the bill of goods, is that /specification/ (not the full text I wrote, but the facts of the specification itself) copyrightable? Why? I don't see that the abstract facts of a specification of interoperability should receive any kind of copyright.
    • ccleve 5y ago
      As a matter of public policy, I agree that the specification should not receive protection, but under the law as written by Congress, it does. Thomas's dissent is correct. My comment is about process, not policy.
      • monocasa 5y ago
        Under the law, they do not receive protection. See Baker v. Selden, which despite it's age is still good law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden
• jimbob45 5y ago
  Does this mean Fuchsia/Zircon are effectively dead? I got the impression Google was keeping them as a backup in case this lawsuit went badly for them.
  • monocasa 5y ago
    Android has already switched to GPLed OpenJDK for the Java classes in question. This was about the Android versions from before that switch over.
• c-smile 5y ago
  Thinking out of box. Am I right that this may essentially end Dart project at Google? As far as I understand Dart was an attempt to have another Java in case that Oracle/Google conflict will not go anywhere. As soon as Google will be able to use Java on dart platforms there will be no need for Dart. Just guessing.
• mjw1007 5y ago
  The bits where they emphasise that the copying was "transformative" as part of the "Purpose and Character of the Use" analysis are interesting: « Google’s limited copying of the API is a transformative use. Google copied only what was needed to allow programmers to work in a different computing environment without discarding a portion of a familiar programming language. Google’s purpose was to create a different task-related system for a different computing environment (smartphones) and to create a platform — the Android platform — that would help achieve and popularize that objective. » « Here Google’s use of the Sun Java API seeks to create new products. It seeks to expand the use and usefulness of Android-based smartphones. Its new product offers programmers a highly creative and innovative tool for a smartphone environment. To the extent that Google used parts of the Sun Java API to create a new platform that could be readily used by programmers, its use was consistent with that creative “progress” that is the basic constitutional objective of copyright itself. » This suggests to me that someone who copies a set of function declarations for the purposes of, say, creating a free-software clone of an existing product might not be able to rely on this decision.
  • bitwize 5y ago
    > This suggests to me that someone who copies a set of function declarations for the purposes of, say, creating a free-software clone of an existing product might not be able to rely on this decision. They wouldn't need to rely on this decision. The courts tend to frown on using IP law as a weapon against interoperability or legitimate competition outside the scope of what the IP law covers. If you get sued for copying Yoyodyne's API in order to develop an otherwise original piece of software whose purpose is to interact with other software that expects Yoyodyne's program, the appeals court is likely to smack the suit down citing Sega v. Accolade and Sony v. Connectix, and the SCOTUS (assuming it gets that far) is likely to agree. One of Oracle's major arguments was that Android was not interoperable with regular Java, and in Oracle's position the fact that Google copied Java's declaring code just to screw Oracle over put Android outside the bounds of interoperability fair-use protection.
• lisper 5y ago
  Although I applaud the effect of this decision, I can't help but agree with Clarence Thomas that the reasoning behind it is not sound. It waffles back and forth between arguments for fair use and arguments that APIs are not (or at least should not be) copyrightable in the first place. You can't have it both ways. If APIs are copyrightable (and a plain reading of the text of the law appears to indicate that they are) then Google's copying was clearly not fair use. The purpose was clearly commercial, not educational or a parody. The API was not merely a fact or an idea, it was a specific embodiment that required effort to produce. And the copying clearly had a negative impact on the value of the original. What really happened here is that the Supreme Court did an end-run around the law to paper over a major fuckup by Congress. On the one hand, I'm glad that they fixed the problem. But the way that they did it fills me with dread for the future because it undermines the rule of law. For the record, I absolutely despise Clarence Thomas and everything that he stands for. But in this case I think he has a valid point.
  • shadowgovt 5y ago
    IANAL, but there is definitely such a thing as commercial fair use. The music industry is rife with "they stole my riff" cases that hinge on whether the copying was transformative and the amount that was copied. I wouldn't go so far as to say this undermines the rule of law (rather, the Court's precedent-setting power is part of the rule of law. It may undermine rule by Congress, but nothing about the US system makes Congress a king, and if they want to take back their power on this topic, they need only craft a clearer law addressing these issues directly). I think reasonable people can agree with Justice Thomas on this (sidebar: this is why I love reading SCOTUS rulings - they're generally wise people and both the majority and dissent sides are usually reasonable takes). The tests of "is it transformative" and "how much was taken" are probably the most subjective tests in the copyright precedent.
  • jacques_chester 5y ago
    > It waffles back and forth between arguments for fair use and arguments that APIs are not (or at least should not be) copyrightable in the first place. The precedential parts are unambiguous: Google's actions were fair use, as a matter of law (this is code to lower courts to not fuck around). The majority opinion did not answer whether APIs are copyrightable in the first place because it was unnecessary to settle the dispute. The rest of it is obiter dicta. Thomas's objection, as is usually the case, is irrelevant. IANAL, TINLA.
• hacktember 5y ago
  I'm sooo relieved that this is over!
• marc__1 5y ago
  Oracle's response[1]: "The Google platform just got bigger and market power greater — the barriers to entry higher and the ability to compete lower. They stole Java and spent a decade litigating as only a monopolist can. This behavior is exactly why regulatory authorities around the world and in the United States are examining Google's business practices." - Dorian Daley, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Oracle [1]https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-statement-regarding-oracle-v-google-301262157.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oracle-statement-re...
  • scriptproof 5y ago
    The alternative would have been not using Java at all. That would have made attracting programmers more difficult at the beginning of the Android platform, but then, Java would have disappeared on mobiles, at least. I do not discuss why Oracle thinks is entitled to have of big chunk of the revenues of Android and the work of Google.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Here, Oracle, let me break out the world's smallest violin...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • xxpor 5y ago
    Oracle is very clearly banking on their political ties with the GOP to save the company. Regulatory capture in its most disgusting form.
  • gundmc 5y ago
    "Only a monopolist would have the resources to fend off our blatant shakedown attempt."
  • Natanael_L 5y ago
    The irony is that what they claim happened is instead what would have happened only if the case was resolved in the opposite direction. Everybody having to pay for API licenses for absolutely everything would be disastrous. The gridlock would be insane.
• dpifke 5y ago
  I found this section (pp. 33-34) particularly interesting: ...enforcement of the Sun Java API copyright might give Oracle a significant share of these funds. It is important, however, to consider why and how Oracle might have become entitled to this money. When a new interface, like an API or a spreadsheet program, first comes on the market, it may attract new users because of its expressive qualities, such as a better visual screen or because of its superior functionality. As time passes, however, it may be valuable for a different reason, namely, because users, including programmers, are just used to it. They have already learned how to work with it. [...] This source of Android’s profitability has much to do with third parties’ (say, programmers’) investment in Sun Java programs. It has correspondingly less to do with Sun’s investment in creating the Sun Java API. We have no reason to believe that the Copyright Act seeks to protect third parties’ investment in learning how to operate a created work. [...] Finally, given programmers’ investment in learning the Sun Java API, to allow enforcement of Oracle’s copyright here would risk harm to the public. If one were to apply the above logic to anti-trust instead of copyright fair use, one might wonder if the Court could find harm to the public in certain behaviors of e.g. a monopoly email provider or monopoly social networking site. (A big argument against anti-trust enforcement against Google and others is that the Sherman Act is designed to protect consumers, not competitors.)
• anonymouse008 5y ago
  After experiencing 'good' and 'bad' API design, I'm really hoping that people who invest in creating great APIs get to benefit from their hard work even after this. This decision doesn't appear to speak to why the 11,500 lines were actually important, other than to 'steal' developers away from Java - which in effect is poaching without the hard paper trail and paystubs. So in the end, I find this setting us all up for the real battle... the utility of APIs and languages, which will bring us back to settle squarely what is a 'utility' & 'design' patent, and what is a copyrighted material. I'm curious to know who will take it up -- I doubt anyone of consequence will be copying APIs after this.
• rhacker 5y ago
  I don't quite know how to say this but, is it possible to be happy about the outcome but have a feeling that it was probably legally not quite straightforward. I mean everyone (or most) on here is probably pleased with the outcome, but extremely biased? Also if Sun was still around would people be rooting for them instead of Google? Oracle isn't exactly easy to love. I'm not looking for pound keyboard replies from people that disagree, I'm just curious if there are others that have the same feeling.
• bsimpson 5y ago
  It's interesting to me that they ruled that APIs are copyrightable, but that copying them is a fair use. In what circumstances would non-fair-use copyright then apply?
  • mlindner 5y ago
    They didn't actually say whether APIs are copyrightable, just that they would assume it for sake of argument and test to see if the fair use test was sufficient. They found the fair use test sufficient so they didn't investigate whether it was copyrightable or not.
    • bsimpson 5y ago
      > In 2014, a federal appeals court ruled that the APIs could be subject to copyright in a controversial decision overturning a ruling by Judge William Alsup. (The Supreme Court declined to hear Google’s appeal the following year, letting the appellate ruling stand.) - https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/5/22367851/google-oracle-supreme-court-ruling-java-android-api https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/5/22367851/google-oracle-sup...
• LogicUpgrade 5y ago
  Honestly this stands contrary to almost every principle of fair use (transformative work of different character for the purpose of comment, parody etc.). Google took tons of APIs from a platform and implemented them into... a platform. If you think designing thousands of classes is not substantial that's a very different argument, different from fair use. Fair use means yes, APIs are copyrightable, but this is transformative use. And, to anyone with a clue in software dev... no it's not. It's basically like taking someone else's script as-is and shooting a movie from it, and the court deeming this use of a script "fair use".
  • topicseed 5y ago
    Is a restaurant menu copyrightable?
    • anticensor 5y ago
      Recipes and menu listings are not. The artistic layout of the menu is. Disclaimer: IANAL
      • topicseed 5y ago
        Artistic layout... The formatting?
• eric_fib 5y ago
  Really interesting!
• eric_fib 5y ago
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• game_the0ry 5y ago
  6-2 majority decision, which is pretty one-sided and really good news for open source. It's worth noting - the two dissenting justices were Clarence and Alito, who are both baby boomers over the age of 70, both old school conservatives. Of other two conservative justices, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch (who are also on the early end of Gen X), both sided with Google.[1] I was not expecting that. I thought they would have aggressive views with respect to the possibility of copyright infringement. Funny moment during the case - Clarence compared Google copying Oracle to a football team stealing an opponent's playbook. That's a really bad analogy and demonstrates a lack of understanding in open source software. Oh, and before I forget - f*ck you, Larry Ellison. [1] Justice Barrett came in too late to participate in the decision, I wonder where she would have sided.
• rossdavidh 5y ago
  So not only a good decision, but one that was decided 6-2, with the younger judges (left and right) among those 6. It looks like it could be a solid majority on the side of sanity on this particular issue for a long time (knock on wood).
• Sephr 5y ago
  Does this mean that frameworks like WINE are now illegal if Microsoft so desires? How about special-cased ad blocker integrations that stub ad vendor APIs? I feel like that would also run afoul of these increased copyright protections.
• d3ntb3ev1l 5y ago
  Can I copy one line from the Beatles catalog “she loves you yeah yeah”. I represents such a small % of their overall lyrics.
• jcranmer 5y ago
  A summary for those who don't want to read the entire thing: This case was originally granted back in 2019. It was scheduled for oral argument in March 2020, but was postponed at the last moment until October because of the pandemic. Being postponed at the last moment, it was fully briefed well over a year ago, and the justices likely knew how they would rule in the case for a long time. (It's unclear how much of an impact oral argument actually has on influencing the decisions). That it took so long for a decision to come out--this is the last October hearing to get an opinion--strongly suggested to me that this would be a messy case with several overlapping concurring and dissenting briefs. It is not. It is a simple 6-2 decision, with a single majority opinion and a single dissenting opinion. I'm reading between the lines here, but it seems pretty clear that Breyer (the majority opinion author) does not believe that APIs are copyrightable in the first place, but doesn't argue that point as he probably does not have enough other votes to agree with him. It's plausible that Breyer had a lengthy section on why APIs weren't copyrightable but that was pulled due to the other justices in the majority rejecting it. We can't know what the voting would break down as, but a 3-3-2 breakdown of "API is uncopyrightable; API is copyrightable, but this is fair use; API is copyrightable, this is not fair use" does not strike me as implausible. (There's not much in favor of this breakdown, note: that I lay it out like this is as much wishful thinking as anything else). Thomas's dissent--I'll focus on that first--essentially makes two main arguments. The first is that API is copyrightable in its own right (Breyer's opinion assumes that it is for the fair use analysis but doesn't say that it is). The second argument is that Google's copying of the API cannot be fair use. A lot of that argument appears back-reasoned from "Google copied so much of the API and they made so much money off of it, how can it possibly be fair." In a broader sense, however, it's a different mode of fair use analysis than Breyer argues for. Thomas essentially views copyright as a property interest, and fair use is a narrow limitation on property interest. The API is an entity in and of itself here, so even though the API is a tiny fraction of both the original and reimplementing code, you need to look at the amount of the API itself that is being copied to judge how substantial a portion it is. Although when he turns to consider the impact that an independent implementation has on the market for the original, it's not the market of the API itself that matters but the market of the entire implementation. Now going back to Breyer's opinion, he treats fair use rather differently. First, Breyer essentially invokes the idea that different kinds of copyrighted material deserve different amounts of protection. He draws a distinction between declaring and implementing code, and notes that since only declaring code is being copied, it pushes the factor analysis much more towards being fair use than otherwise. In contrast to Thomas, Breyer notes that commercial use isn't automatically non-fair use, and lists a few examples of where commercial use can indeed be fair use. Also, Breyer pushes hard against the idea of copyright being about property interests, noting that the Constitution expressly provides that copyright is for the progress of science and arts. Whereas Thomas places primacy on the importance of the effect of the market, Breyer instead contends that it's the least important factor here. All the way back at oral argument, Thomas surprised me with the most insightful question: the fair use factors in the law are very explicitly a nonexhaustive list, so what other factors might exist to sway fair use analysis? At opinion time, Thomas is instead the one to declare that none other exist, while it's Breyer who rather strenuously comments that fair use analysis is not exhaustive, although he does not include any other factors in his analysis. What's the overall impact, then? APIs may or may not be copyrightable--SCOTUS does not decide. But Breyer essentially suggests that APIs have at best "thin copyright"--a lot of their use may be inherently fair use (the same analysis Breyer does here can reasonably be copy-pasted for a lot of API reimplementation cases). What's more radical is the effect it has on fair use analysis. Breyer states that appeal courts have to reconsider fair use on appeals if juries find a use to be fair or not (that's an easy part of the opinion to miss). Breyer upends the traditional notion of how to balance fair use factors yet again. Essentially, he suggests that the analysis of fair use is dependent in large part on what kind of work is being copied, and the balancing is dependent on the kind of work. He also rejects a lot of the traditional emphasis on market or potential market analysis for fair use. This is somewhat disclaimed for wider application to non-code cases, but you can bet there is now going to be a lot of appeals surrounding fair use over the next few years.
• dang 5y ago
  Threads are paginated for performance reasons (yes we're working on it), so to see the rest of the comments you need to click More at the bottom of the page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26699106&p=3 (If you've already seen a bunch of these, I apologize for the annoying repetition.)
• drallison 5y ago
  The SCOTUS decision on API Fair Use is the correct one. Students of intellectual property law and computer programs will find the briefing for the Supreme Court fascinating. I find it hard to see how the Circuit Panel that overturned the original pro-Google decision to Oracle's favor in the light of the arguments and evidence provided. The briefing for the Cert, particularly the amici, is worth reading. Oracle tried to move the argument into the public square by encouraging "experts" to write damning op-ed articles for news outlets and for the semi-technical press about the evils that Google did. Often their articles misplayed a shallow understanding of the issues and history of the Oracle/Google dispute. The SCOTUS decision cuts through the cruft and reaches the right finding in this case. It shows that the Supremes can can pay attention and do the right thing.
• paulmd 5y ago
  Hopefully this is a crack in the armor of the x86 monopoly - after all what is an instruction set but an "API for processors"? The novelty is in how you implement the instruction set, not the actual API that says "this instruction takes A and adds it to B", that is purely a matter of compatibility.
  • xxpor 5y ago
    Who would willingly make a new x86 design these days? I would think this would crack ARM's control over their instruction set though. I can't imagine it'd be worth re-implementing literally the entire thing from scratch though when ARM will willingly sell you IP blocks, as opposed to Intel or ARM which will certainly not.
    • paulmd 5y ago
      Zhaoxin Semiconductor, for one. Hygon licensed AMD's architecture as a starting point for their own stuff for another. You're not going to find a lot in the west due to the patent issues (why follow that path when you're doomed to be sued into the ground), but there clearly is a desire to pursue x86 as an ISA (as opposed to going with ARM).
      • xxpor 5y ago
        That's fair, but on the other hand, why would they have cared about American copyright in the first place? Worst that could happen to them is they're banned from being imported into the west, which they probably didn't see as a realistic market anyway.
  • garaetjjte 5y ago
    Does anybody claim copyright for ISA though? I think it is just patent minefield.
• jariel 5y ago
  Now Google, Microsoft and Oracle can go ahead and copy little startup's APIs, or even Stripe? Using Stripe? You're literally one-click away from our new Google Payments? Just change this URL, and you're good? I'm not as keen about the outcome as others. It's good for open source in a way but I'm wary of big cos just wiping out smaller one's. Also - does anyone with insight have something to say about open source APIs being copied, to get around copyleft? Could GPL'd software now be 're-implemented' without concern?
• pjmlp 5y ago
  Now while I eat my hat, I am waiting to see what will be the next excuse for not updating Android Java to latest versions.
  • monocasa 5y ago
    Oracle's newer VM patents.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      Cleverly forgetting those from IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon, Azul, SAP, Alibaba and everyone else that works on Java?
      • monocasa 5y ago
        No, because the core patents behind the features you're asking about are very much in Oracle's possession, as those class library improvements were overwhelmingly written by Sun/Oracle engineers. Those other actors you're talking about absolutely contribute, but not in as nearly a fundamental to the implementation of the library and runtime definitions kind of way.
        • pjmlp 5y ago
          Are you now asserting that Sun/Oracle has pattents regarding Azul's GC implementation, PTC real time threading and AOT compiler, Aicas hard real time GC, IBM mainframe implementations of their own JVM and WebSphere Real Time VM?
          • monocasa 5y ago
            No, I'm asserting that those (while being extremely valuable additions to the field) have nothing to do with a newer version of Java which is what you were asking about. > the next excuse for not updating Android Java to latest versions.
• tibbydudeza 5y ago
  A good ruling. Re-implementing an API is how we got clone PC's when Compaq cloned the IBM BIOS interface and associated ISA bus logic which made Intel based DOS home computers cheaper and affordable for ordinary people.
• nashashmi 5y ago
  I have a workaround. I was thinking that an adapter socket can be patented. And use by others cannot be made declared under fair use. So what if APIs were also patented?
• bostonsre 5y ago
  Does oracle have any moves left to counter this decision? Or are we finally clear of this litigation that has been hanging over us for so long?
  • lolinder 5y ago
    The Supreme Court is the court of last resort. They'd have to start over with some new argument, and if they had a better one I imagine they would've pulled it out by now.
    • bostonsre 5y ago
      Thanks, makes sense and is good to hear.
• burtonator 5y ago
  Let's assume Google was in the wrong here - for the sake of argument. How would it been possible for Google to do this without just taking the API definitions. Could they have just use compiler errors?
  • kaba0 5y ago
    Pay for the at the time not open license?
• aerovistae 5y ago
  Does anyone have any insight into how the justices are educated about a case like this? I guess this applies to many cases, involving a variety of industries, but it's especially clear here that making a decision requires a technical understanding of the stakes. How are the justices made to understand what the different concepts meant? from reading the ruling it's clear that they have a very good understanding, and it's impressive for non-programmers, most of whom are older and did not grow up with technology.
• baq 5y ago
  Was following this on slashdot. Kids grew up in the meantime.
• suhail_saifi929 5y ago
  Gjb
• Black101 5y ago
  Does that mean that we can use portions of copyright code/text with no repercussions?
  • Black101 5y ago
    thanks for the downvote you spineless user;)
• szhu 5y ago
  Great line: > Unlike many other computer programs, the value of the copied lines is in significant part derived from the in- vestment of users (here computer programmers) who have learned the API’s system.
• gigatexal 5y ago
  I’m super conflicted because I think I side with Oracle here and I never seem to. Java had an established API. It had a license. Google could have licensed it and the end result would have been the same: Java apps on Android. Weren’t there even Google brass worried about this in emails? It seems to me Oracle is due license fees but SCOTUS ruled otherwise and I guess that’s overall better for the industry.
  • wtallis 5y ago
    Copyright protection is not an automatic right that you're entitled to for anything you put effort into creating and want to make money off of. There are more specific requirements for what you need to do to secure copyright protection or patent protection, and there are limits on the exclusive rights those get you. "They worked hard on it and want to charge money for it" is not a sound argument.
    • gigatexal 5y ago
      Edit: I’m dumb. I need to read all of the ruling and then research what fair-use really means. Again I’m not a lawyer and I know there’s nuance and precedent in the law I just am having a hard time with the seemingly obvious-ness of this case. Some examples to share how I am thinking of this: 1. Procuring land, paying contractors, buying materials, etc., doesn’t entitle you to rents in perpetuity on say an apartment you build? Or 2. if I produce music — until that music ages out and becomes a public good — and I own the masters and all the rights to it having put in the work and the time and the money etc., am I not entitled to all the fees from licensing it to be played and consumed? I am having a hard time seeing how it’s not a sound argument given that it seems very clear that Sun Microsystems put in a lot of work and effort and time and money to get Java off the ground and here Google comes and copies it even when there was an easy way to get a license.
• netnewnews 5y ago
  Not a programmer. If I find a service that provides and API and I want the existing developers (customers) who use the service to be able to use a competitive service and the original API is re-created in order to provide compatibility with the second service. Is this OK? The original API is part of a commercial service, the re-created API will be a commercial service, but not the entire service just a compatibility layer. Thoughts?
• chmod600 5y ago
  This is not a Constitutional issue. This is a purely legal decision based on a federal statute passed by Congress. Constitutional issues are somewhat of a mix of the political and legal. SCOTUS tries to be apolitical, but by its nature it can override Congress on Constitutional matters, and therefore it's at least somewhat political. But cases like this are legal. Political credit and blame for this decision should go to Congress, not SCOTUS. Of course, those interested in the legal process itself may give credit or blame to the justices for their legal positions.
• sandes 5y ago
  > Those 11,500 lines, however, are only 0.4 percent of the entire API at issue, which consists of 2.86 million total lines This marks jurisprudence
• webreac 5y ago
  I am not a lawyer. Is it finished ? Has Oracle completely lost ? I really do not like very much Oracle.
• martin1975 5y ago
  I hate analogies... but will use one here... 'copying' an API, to me is a bit like copying the look&feel of a product. There used to be similar lawsuits alleging 'look and feel' violations awhile back between Microsoft and whomever (I don't recall anymore), most if not all of these bombed. If Google had lost this one, then the next step would be copyrighting a typedef-ed struct with "proprietary" Google data in it... I am not a huge fan of Google's antics in general, but in this case, I am glad they won.
• chmod600 5y ago
  From the dissent: "Instead of creating its own declaring code—as Apple and Microsoft chose to do— Google copied verbatim 11,500 lines of Oracle’s declaring code and arranged that code exactly as Oracle had done." I didn't read the whole opinion, but what is Google's excuse for this? If there's one way to do it, I don't think copyright should apply. But when there's more than one way, why should copyright not provide some protection? I guess just because it's tiny and contains little expression? Regardless, it seems like very poor judgement to not do a cleanroom implementation here.
  • Google234 5y ago
    That’s the API? You can’t clean room that without having a different API.
  • arduinomancer 5y ago
    The 11,500 lines is the API interface, so just the function/class signatures. They _did_ do a cleanroom implementation, that's the whole issue that makes it an interesting case: are APIs fair use?
    • chmod600 5y ago
      Why did it have to be a verbatim copy rather than just a very similar API spec?
      • arduinomancer 5y ago
        Because you wouldn’t be able to run your existing Java code on their VM? The whole point was interoperability
• strenholme 5y ago
  I am very glad to see this. Having a “you can abuse copyright to have proprietary control over an API” precedent on the books had a chilling effect for programmers. Let me give you one example as an electronic musician. Once upon a time, Steinberg created an API for connecting programs which simulate musical instruments and musical effects (think reverb, echo, flanger, etc.) called VST. This API was always proprietary but everyone ending up using it, including the open source Audacity program which uses an open source re-implementation of the VST API, allowing it to use professional effects when editing tracks. Well, Steinberg decided that VST2 — the one everyone has been using — was out of date and removed all downloads to the VST2 API, since they wanted users to upgrade to VST3. While a lot of professional music making tools have updated to VST3, others have not, and a lot of tools will never be updated. Steinberg no longer has a copy of the VST2 SDK available for download; they’re really trying to get everyone to update to VST3. Now, with this horrible “Google vs. Oracle” precedent looming over everyone’s head that a company was allowed to copyright an API, Steinberg could had, in theory, said “VST2 is copyrighted, and Audacity is not allowed to use their own independent implementation of that API” (they didn’t in practice because they know it’s bad business; indeed VST3 is dual licensed, where GPL3 is one of the license options). With this precedent, the Audacity team can more easily retain their independent implementation of VST2 knowing the legal precedent saying re-implementing an API is fair use.
  • pyrale 5y ago
    > I am very glad to see this. Having a “you can abuse copyright to have proprietary control over an API” precedent on the books was a chilling effect for programmers. It was always possible to release APIs as open-source. There's as much chilling effect about proprietary software as there ever was being careful about using licensed work, and that was never a problem. On the other hand, the hunting season on companies providing software is now open. You're a startup providing a new database, or a well-thought library? Shit, you better take the VC money before someone else does and puts you out of business. And when a company like Amazon comes with an offer, you better not be in a bargaining mood.
• shmerl 5y ago
  That's good for practical purposes, but they still didn't rule on APIs being copyrightable or not to begin with? It's a bit weird to say "it's fair use" but not say "it's not copyrightable in the first place".
• hi41 5y ago
  I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear this. My heart sank when things seemed to not go well for Google.
• mason1 5y ago
  this is a matter of opinions, and the jurors voted based on their own flawed understanding
• ta20210405 5y ago
  I wonder if Google will continue to move away from Java even after winning this ruling. What will Java look like at Google in 2030?
• arbirk 5y ago
  Well worth a read. "We reach the conclusion that in this case, where Google reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, Google’s copying of the Sun Java API was a fair use of that material as a matter of law."
• winter_blue 5y ago
  I hope Oracle is ordered to cover Google's legal expenses for all of the lawsuits (related to this).
• peter303 5y ago
  How who Apple react if some company copied, then implemented their iOS API on their mobile device, so they could run Apples hundreds of thousands apps?
• mgalgs 5y ago
  Every time I see a big thread I smile knowing dang is going to have to write some comment about how they're working on things
• ivolimmen 5y ago
  So Oracle's reason to buy Sun failed? I am happy.
• WoodenChair 5y ago
  Regardless of how you feel about the legal question, if you read the whole thing, it’s interesting to see how much the justices differ with regards to their respective grasps of the technical and business issues. In particular Thomas’s dissent includes many very relevant business and technical facts that Breyer’s opinion doesn’t even mention. For example Java SE vs Java Micro Edition, advertising business model vs licensing model, the inherent creativity of designing an API, Apple and Microsoft’s competing products, etc.
• iudqnolq 5y ago
  I found this description of an API surprisingly good compared to earlier courts. It's not quite literally true, but it makes sense. > The copied lines of code are part of a “user interface” that provides a way for programmers to access prewritten computer code through the use of simple commands. As a result, this code is different from many other types of code, such as the code that actually instructs the computer to execute a task > As part of an interface, the copied lines are inherently bound together with uncopyrightable ideas (the overall organization of the API) and the creation of new creative expression (the code independently written by Google). Unlike many other computer programs, the value of the copied lines is in significant part derived from the investment of users (here computer programmers) who have learned the API’s system.
• bitwize 5y ago
  For me, the problem here is that there is no logically consistent way to rule in favor of Google without undermining the concept of software copyright itself. APIs are creative expression: at a basic level, it is possible to change the names, the order, and to some extent the type of parameters and achieve the same result. It is also possible to change the structure of the API itself at a large scale in such a way that the programmer still can do what the API purports to provide, in a completely different way. Therefore, if one were to call APIs merely functional "declaring code" that cannot be copyrighted, then that would put all software code at risk of being called such. The idea that, say, a certain algorithm can be expressed in many different ways lies at the heart of how we justify making such expressions copyrightable. With this ruling, either software will be found to be entirely (or mostly) uncopyrightable, which is unlikely, or software copyright will turn into an even bigger legal morass that requires a team of top-tier lawyers just to understand which parts of your software are effectively copyrightable (or potentially infringing) and which aren't. The Supreme Court should have found in favor of Oracle, and told Google to bring their case before Congress if they're so worried that API copyrightability would destroy the industry.
• therealbilly 5y ago
  Why would Google do this in the first place? The reason is that they did not have time to figure out what capabilities might be needed in their own solution. So copy the API from someone's other competing product and then later, put code behind those API calls. Is it theft or cheating? Kind of, I suppose. It saved them time from having to engineer the API surface.
  • xeromal 5y ago
    Yeah, it really just gave them a shape that devs were familiar with and they could evolve the underlying mechanisms over time
• domano 5y ago
  Guess thats it for Fuchsia and Flutter
• TeaVMFan 5y ago
  I feel conflicted about this decision. I've added some analysis here: https://frequal.com/java/SupremeCourtOracleVsGoogleRuling2021.html https://frequal.com/java/SupremeCourtOracleVsGoogleRuling202... focusing on two areas: * Google had the ability to make their own language and APIs for Android * The chilling effect on future language/API innovation
• magwa101 5y ago
  Now for all the money MS is paying to Oracle for C#...