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Florian Mueller (“FOSSPatents”) prominently shilled for Oracle, back during the Google v Oracle case days. That's when Oracle were trying to destroy the right t

by orra 4y ago

Florian Mueller (“FOSSPatents”) prominently shilled for Oracle, back during the Google v Oracle case days. That's when Oracle were trying to destroy the right to create an open source, clean room reimplementation of an API. He doesn't give a shit about FOSS. Do not trust.

bitwize 4y ago
Florian and the Federal Circuit were right. The Supreme Court ruling was pure legislating from the bench, and opens up a Pandora's box that may undermine the meaningfulness of copyright itself. If the design of an API is not creative expression, what exactly is?
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Florian and the Federal Circuit were right. The Supreme Court ruling was pure legislating from the bench, and opens up a Pandora’s box that may undermine the meaningfulness of copyright itself. If the design of an API is not creative expression The Supreme Court did not overrule the Federal Circuit on whether APIs are creative expression and thus subject to copyright, so why are you accusing them of legislating from the bench for doing so? They skipped over that issue, assumed (for the sake of other analysis) that the Federal Circuit got it right, concluded that Google’s use of the presumed-copyright-protected APIs was nonetheless Fair Use as a matter of law. This was pretty deliberately an effort to preserve the broader copyright eligibility issue so as to allow it to be more fully developed by the lower courts; it is the kind of issue the Supreme Court generally wouldn’t take up without a circuit split or a case that was both important and required reaching that point to decide. Having another out in a case where there was no circuit split and not even a clear answer from the responsible circuit (the Federal Circuit was supposed to apply Ninth Circuit law as binding precedent in this case, and, being generous to the Federal Circuit, the question presented is distinct enough that it isn’t perfectly clear that they did that well) made it a prime case for kicking the can down the road. Which they did, leaving the Federal Circuit decision in place, but not actually binding on any other court the way it would have been if there hadn’t been patent issues and the Ninth Circuit had ruled on the issue.
  - bitwize 4y ago
    > The Supreme Court did not overrule the Federal Circuit on whether APIs are creative expression and thus subject to copyright, so why are you accusing them of legislating from the bench for doing so? Because if Google's appropriation of Oracle's API IP without a license is fair use, what uses of an API would be protected by copyright?
    - joe_the_user 4y ago
      None? The Supreme Court and the Federal Appeals Court moved the situation from APIs not being copyrightable to their copyrightable but not being usable in the monopoly-enforcement fashion that the copyright-holders generally intend. So there! This kind of silliness isn't without precedent. Font shapes and expressions can't be copyrighted but font names can be. And that's worth something to the font creator.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Font shapes and expressions can’t be copyrighted but font names can be. Font programs can be copyrighted, and font names can be trademarked (not copyrighted.)
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Because if Google's appropriation of Oracle's API IP without a license is fair use, what uses of an API would be protected by copyright? Well, copying the implementing code of the API rather than only the declarations, or copying the declarations for a purpose that was not supporting an implementation for a very different underlying platform constraints could be distinguished on grounds central to the core of the Supreme Court decision. The former would very likely fail Fair Use analysis without some new factor not presebt in Google v. Oracle, the latter is less certain. (And any of the other points of the fair use analysis could be basis for distinction, the analysis is complex and doesn’t boil down to a short, simple rule.)
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  Florian has a record as a shill going back twenty years to the old sco-vs-IBM lawsuit (EDIT: where preventing the us of copyrighted an API was also thrown as I recall). He's not necessarily wrong or stupid on a given claim. It's just that if he says something, you can bet someone paid him to say it. The name of his blog is kind of funny. Maybe it's short for "screwing Free and Open Source Software using PATENTS"

by orra 4y ago

bitwize 4y ago

Florian and the Federal Circuit were right. The Supreme Court ruling was pure legislating from the bench, and opens up a Pandora's box that may undermine the meaningfulness of copyright itself. If the design of an API is not creative expression, what exactly is?

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Florian and the Federal Circuit were right. The Supreme Court ruling was pure legislating from the bench, and opens up a Pandora’s box that may undermine the meaningfulness of copyright itself. If the design of an API is not creative expression The Supreme Court did not overrule the Federal Circuit on whether APIs are creative expression and thus subject to copyright, so why are you accusing them of legislating from the bench for doing so? They skipped over that issue, assumed (for the sake of other analysis) that the Federal Circuit got it right, concluded that Google’s use of the presumed-copyright-protected APIs was nonetheless Fair Use as a matter of law. This was pretty deliberately an effort to preserve the broader copyright eligibility issue so as to allow it to be more fully developed by the lower courts; it is the kind of issue the Supreme Court generally wouldn’t take up without a circuit split or a case that was both important and required reaching that point to decide. Having another out in a case where there was no circuit split and not even a clear answer from the responsible circuit (the Federal Circuit was supposed to apply Ninth Circuit law as binding precedent in this case, and, being generous to the Federal Circuit, the question presented is distinct enough that it isn’t perfectly clear that they did that well) made it a prime case for kicking the can down the road. Which they did, leaving the Federal Circuit decision in place, but not actually binding on any other court the way it would have been if there hadn’t been patent issues and the Ninth Circuit had ruled on the issue.
- bitwize 4y ago
  > The Supreme Court did not overrule the Federal Circuit on whether APIs are creative expression and thus subject to copyright, so why are you accusing them of legislating from the bench for doing so? Because if Google's appropriation of Oracle's API IP without a license is fair use, what uses of an API would be protected by copyright?
  - joe_the_user 4y ago
    None? The Supreme Court and the Federal Appeals Court moved the situation from APIs not being copyrightable to their copyrightable but not being usable in the monopoly-enforcement fashion that the copyright-holders generally intend. So there! This kind of silliness isn't without precedent. Font shapes and expressions can't be copyrighted but font names can be. And that's worth something to the font creator.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > Font shapes and expressions can’t be copyrighted but font names can be. Font programs can be copyrighted, and font names can be trademarked (not copyrighted.)
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Because if Google's appropriation of Oracle's API IP without a license is fair use, what uses of an API would be protected by copyright? Well, copying the implementing code of the API rather than only the declarations, or copying the declarations for a purpose that was not supporting an implementation for a very different underlying platform constraints could be distinguished on grounds central to the core of the Supreme Court decision. The former would very likely fail Fair Use analysis without some new factor not presebt in Google v. Oracle, the latter is less certain. (And any of the other points of the fair use analysis could be basis for distinction, the analysis is complex and doesn’t boil down to a short, simple rule.)
joe_the_user 4y ago
Florian has a record as a shill going back twenty years to the old sco-vs-IBM lawsuit (EDIT: where preventing the us of copyrighted an API was also thrown as I recall). He's not necessarily wrong or stupid on a given claim. It's just that if he says something, you can bet someone paid him to say it. The name of his blog is kind of funny. Maybe it's short for "screwing Free and Open Source Software using PATENTS"