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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 FOS
by qalmakka 6y 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 6y agoI assume this means that Amazon can ignore the Elastic and Mongo licenses when building compatible implementations?
- jahnu 6y agoAt least in the US
- typon 6y agoWhich, for now, is the global hegemon in software and tech at large. Any US court decision is extremely important to the whole industry.
- CarelessExpert 6y agoUS copyright law and interpretation tends to get exported through trade deals and other forms of political and economic pressure.
- tephra 6y agoWhile 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.
- monocasa 6y agoThat's always just a treaty away from changing.
- fulafel 6y agoThere is a tendency, but it's not deterministic. When it does happem, it's more often for the broad strokes than this kind of detail, see eg sw patents.
- jhgb 6y agoDid Oracle also sue Google in other countries outside of the US? To my knowledge we didn't need any saving in this respect in my country.
- qalmakka 6y agoDoesn't matter, as GDPR showed having something that's troublesome to sell or distribute in certain (critical) markets is a huge, massive roadblock for most companies. Software patents are worth s*t in the EU, but still we had to endure year of hassle when installing MP3s and such on Linux due to most distros having to also comply with the US market.
- pwg 6y agos/patent trolls/copyright trolls/ This case involved copyright, not patents. Copyrights are separate from patents.
- monocasa 6y agoI agree with the parent. Patent trolls aren't tied to patents because of some love for patents specifically, but because the legal structure allows for the most misuse. They would gladly add another tool to their belt given the chance, as we saw from this case with most of the bad copyright opinions coming from the CAFC, ie. the patent appeals court that's currently stuffed with IP maximalists.
- adolph 6y agoOracle sued Google for copyright and patent infringement. Today's decision has to do with the fair use defence in the copyright portion of the lawsuit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_....
- monocasa 6y agoI understand that. I'm saying that the same people that are patent trolls would add misuse of copyright to their set of tools if it became that became a viable option available to them. Today's patent trolls would just be called IP trolls, but they'd be the same set of people.
- adolph 6y agoCopyright is already misused to perform DCMA takedowns of fair use and is a well known option available to all comers. I think the classic example was the Prenda lawsuit firm. Prenda made its money by suing people who allegedly downloaded pornographic films online. Its targets frequently agreed to settlements worth a few thousand dollars rather than facing a courtroom process. These copyright trolling tactics netted the company more than $6 million between 2010 and 2013. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/prenda-law-porn-troll-saga-ends-with-prison-for-founder/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/07/prenda-law-porn-...
- xforeigner 6y agoGood, now can we get a ruling that prevents Google, RedHat, Microsoft and others from wrecking FLOSS projects with their stifling influence? Or prevent them from eradicating competing or even original projects by doing hostile rewrites or forks?
- kps 6y agoShould we also get rid of all of GNU's hostile rewrites?
- curt15 6y agoPeople seem to frequently forget that GNU was largely a GPL reimplementation of proprietary software.
- andrewnicolalde 6y ago> Or prevent them from eradicating competing or even original projects by doing hostile rewrites or forks? Wouldn't this directly contravene the findings in this case?
- qalmakka 6y agoWhy would you prevent someone from writing whatever code they want, as long as it is FOSS? That's hypocritical, considering that doing whatever you want with the code is one of GNU's main tenets ("free as in freedom")
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- kaba0 6y agoWhy? It wasn’t about whether APIs are under copyright (they are), but whether this particular case constitutes fair use. I think the effect of this decision was way overblown.
- jaywalk 6y agoIf this wasn't fair use, nothing of any substantial value could be considered fair use.
- zackees 6y agoHaving a song in the background of a video is not considered fair use. But copying an entire API by a mega corporation in order to appropriate all its value, is fair use.
- kaba0 6y agoWine would be a much better example of fair use. It is explicitly made to allow users of linux to run programs written against win APIs. It is not so clear in the Oracle vs Google case, because it is questionable whether Google’s case was really fair use (google pretty much didn’t want to pay Sun for the mobile license and the whole thing was done as cost saving) - hence the very long timeline of the case.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoThe dissent explains how Android fails three of the four fair use tests. I'm not sure what the majority was smoking when they wrote this, but far better examples of fair use exist, especially uses that are noncommercial and especially are noncompetitive with the original. Java was a mobile OS before Android literally obliterated the market after copying Java. Arguably, if Android was fair use, everything is fair use and all software copyright is fundamentally defeated by this ruling.
- hajile 6y agoI’d make the case that it instead saved closed source coding. Open source code is still usually copyrighted. Nobody would trust closed languages and APIs unless they paid a fortune for them while open source with a grant would be safe to use.
- Natanael_L 6y agoIt also saved open source software which reimplements proprietary API:s
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ISL 6y agoIt is going to open a big door for people who reimplement APIs. In particular, social-media aggregators (one app to display your Twitter, FB, Instagram, etc.) may have new protections.
- lolinder 6y agoI don't know about that. The issue at hand there isn't implementation of APIs, it's using an existing API (run on existing infrastructure) in a way that the social media company does not approve of. Isn't that more an issue of unauthorized access than of copyright?
- adolph 6y agoTo be pedantic, this part of the case is about copyright law, not patent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_.... The first phase of the case lasted from 2010 to 2015. Oracle successfully established that APIs are copyrightable, but their claims of patent infringement were rejected. Google petitioned the Supreme Court in October 2014 to review the case, but this was denied. A second petition by Google in January 2019 included the judgement that APIs are copyrightable. The Supreme Court agreed to review this part of the judgment in November 2019. To the degree that SCOTUS has found that an API can be copyrighted, there is still room for copyright trolls to operate.