4 ms·

I'm surprised that copyrightability of APIs is still an open question in (US) law. Is that because people haven't copied each other's APIs before, or because w

I'm surprised that copyrightability of APIs is still an open question in (US) law. Is that because people haven't copied each other's APIs before, or because when they did nobody cared about the legality?

ajross 15y ago
It might be a bit of a stretch to say it's an open question. This is the first time (AFAIK) anyone has sued over it, so there's no case law. The closest equivalent in "big" cases is probably Lotus v. Borland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Intl,_Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int...). Basically, Lotus sued Borland because the menu layout of Quatro was identical to 1-2-3. They won initially, but ultimately lost in the Supreme Court. The judgement was that the mechanism for using a program was not a copyrightable form. Prior to this case, I guess everyone sane had assumed that an API was a basically equivalent mechanism (just one for a programmer instead of a user). But Oracle has the constitutional right to sue for what they believe they own, so there's no "short circuit" that would prevent the suit.
- TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
  Might want to fix that link, there's a `'` in there.
- nitrogen 15y ago
  I thought that the copyrightability of APIs was a question in USL vs. BSDi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi). Am I mistaken?
  - tonyjwang 15y ago
    If settlement occurs before a judgment is passed down, then the court case doesn't bind future decisions.
rbanffy 15y ago
Or because nobody had so much to win as Oracle does now. And because nobody copied Larry Ellison's API until now.
nextparadigms 15y ago
This has actually been the same situation with patents. There are so many vague patents given to companies already, that if everyone who has a patent actually started enforcing them at once, the entire tech industry could collapse within months. The only reason this hasn't happened is because most companies are not that "evil" to actually try to use vague patents against other companies, and they just want to own them for defensive purposes (which wasn't the goal of patents at all). But this shows just how screwed up the law is, and that if all companies would want to collect their "rights" the system would collapse. Instead, right now there are only a few who do it, and it's very profitable for them because nobody is really challenging them on this.
- fpp 15y ago
  and the same discussion on being able to get a patent on APIs also happened - the most famous contestant at that time was Microsoft's .Net API patent application (now US7581231) - by now MS hold a series of patents on other APIs plus has a whole lot of additional API patent applications pending. Now one could say that there are many patents that should have never been granted to MS or others (one of the better examples for MS would certainly be getting a patent on a Windows sudo implementation - US6775781) - but it might be indicative why MS went along the path to get patents on APIs vs trying to just copyright it. Given that copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter itself this pretty much explains why the copyright office would only require the first and last 50 lines of code. While the answer with e.g. REST APIs that are pretty much exchangeable might be rather easy with more complex ones like system level or also the Java API this becomes pretty complex. Maybe an analogy might help: If you take a car you might be able to patent and copyright most parts and functions but you certainly will not be able to copyright that you can drive the car per-se. With an API like the Java API where the majority has been open sourced the actual use of the API (IMHO up to the wording of it or making this wording available in your application) is merely the general ability to use the solution overall - like diving a car or making it possible to drive along with other cars in traffic. Then comes the question if Sun / Oracle have actually previously provided the permission to use the API directly or as part of other licenses (e.g. ClassPath)

ajross 15y ago

It might be a bit of a stretch to say it's an open question. This is the first time (AFAIK) anyone has sued over it, so there's no case law. The closest equivalent in "big" cases is probably Lotus v. Borland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Intl,_Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Dev._Corp._v._Borland_Int...). Basically, Lotus sued Borland because the menu layout of Quatro was identical to 1-2-3. They won initially, but ultimately lost in the Supreme Court. The judgement was that the mechanism for using a program was not a copyrightable form. Prior to this case, I guess everyone sane had assumed that an API was a basically equivalent mechanism (just one for a programmer instead of a user). But Oracle has the constitutional right to sue for what they believe they own, so there's no "short circuit" that would prevent the suit.

TazeTSchnitzel 15y ago
Might want to fix that link, there's a `'` in there.
nitrogen 15y ago
I thought that the copyrightability of APIs was a question in USL vs. BSDi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USL_v._BSDi). Am I mistaken?
- tonyjwang 15y ago
  If settlement occurs before a judgment is passed down, then the court case doesn't bind future decisions.

rbanffy 15y ago

Or because nobody had so much to win as Oracle does now. And because nobody copied Larry Ellison's API until now.

nextparadigms 15y ago

This has actually been the same situation with patents. There are so many vague patents given to companies already, that if everyone who has a patent actually started enforcing them at once, the entire tech industry could collapse within months. The only reason this hasn't happened is because most companies are not that "evil" to actually try to use vague patents against other companies, and they just want to own them for defensive purposes (which wasn't the goal of patents at all). But this shows just how screwed up the law is, and that if all companies would want to collect their "rights" the system would collapse. Instead, right now there are only a few who do it, and it's very profitable for them because nobody is really challenging them on this.

fpp 15y ago
and the same discussion on being able to get a patent on APIs also happened - the most famous contestant at that time was Microsoft's .Net API patent application (now US7581231) - by now MS hold a series of patents on other APIs plus has a whole lot of additional API patent applications pending. Now one could say that there are many patents that should have never been granted to MS or others (one of the better examples for MS would certainly be getting a patent on a Windows sudo implementation - US6775781) - but it might be indicative why MS went along the path to get patents on APIs vs trying to just copyright it. Given that copyright protects the form of expression rather than the subject matter itself this pretty much explains why the copyright office would only require the first and last 50 lines of code. While the answer with e.g. REST APIs that are pretty much exchangeable might be rather easy with more complex ones like system level or also the Java API this becomes pretty complex. Maybe an analogy might help: If you take a car you might be able to patent and copyright most parts and functions but you certainly will not be able to copyright that you can drive the car per-se. With an API like the Java API where the majority has been open sourced the actual use of the API (IMHO up to the wording of it or making this wording available in your application) is merely the general ability to use the solution overall - like diving a car or making it possible to drive along with other cars in traffic. Then comes the question if Sun / Oracle have actually previously provided the permission to use the API directly or as part of other licenses (e.g. ClassPath)