3 ms·

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

• jcranmer 6y 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.