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> 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

• 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.)