Oracle (and Sun) knew this - that's why these are patents. The law allowing reverse engineering of APIs and interconnects is well established in the US and Eur

Oracle (and Sun) knew this - that's why these are patents. The law allowing reverse engineering of APIs and interconnects is well established in the US and Europe and has been for decades. In the US it goes back to Amdhal making plug compatible peripherals for IBMs and the right to reverse engineer is enshrined in an EU directive. That's why the Oracle case isn't about copyright. They claim to have patents on various concepts of the language. So you are perfectly at liberty to implement a 'while' command with the same function template - you just aren't allowed to use it to do a loop !