This may have already been decided (in the direction of APIs not being copyrighted) by Lotus v Borland: http://madisonian.net/2012/05/09/oracle-v-google-diggin

This may have already been decided (in the direction of APIs not being copyrighted) by Lotus v Borland: http://madisonian.net/2012/05/09/oracle-v-google-digging-deeper/ http://madisonian.net/2012/05/09/oracle-v-google-digging-dee... Note that this a blog post by a very respected IP law expert (cited by the Supreme Court in recent decisions). One detail I find particularly interesting is that, unlike most common summaries which focus on the UI issues, he points out that there was also an API issue at stake in Lotus v Borland: the menu structure was effectively part of the macro programming API.