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Yep, that's the juicy excerpt. Other bits that I found salient from the ruling, on patent vs. copyright: Much of Oracle’s evidence at trial went to show th
by Cyranix 14y ago
Yep, that's the juicy excerpt. Other bits that I found salient from the ruling, on patent vs. copyright:
Much of Oracle’s evidence at trial went to show that the
design of methods in an API was a creative endeavor. Of
course, that is true. Inventing a new method to deliver a
new output can be creative, even inventive, including the
choices of inputs needed and outputs returned. The same is
true for classes. But such inventions — at the concept and
functionality level — are protectable only under the
Patent Act.
...
That a system or method of operation has thousands of
commands arranged in a creative taxonomy does not change
its character as a method of operation. Yes, it is
creative. Yes, it is original. Yes, it resembles a
taxonomy. But it is nevertheless a command structure, a
system or method of operation — a long hierarchy of over
six thousand commands to carry out pre-assigned functions.
For that reason, it cannot receive copyright protection —
patent protection perhaps — but not copyright protection.
The entirety of p. 38, on interoperability and fragmentation, is also a good read.
- newhouseb 14y agoDoes this mean that companies will start to patent their APIs? I wonder if this means we should expect virtually the same case s/copyright/patents/g a few years in the future.
- wmf 14y agoPatenting of APIs/protocols/file formats has been going on for a while. The bar for patenting an API will be much higher[1] because it has to be a novel concept. [1] In theory. In reality, the USPTO will issue anything.
- Tuna-Fish 14y agoUSPTO will issue anything, but the patents rarely survive. In this litigation, all the patents brought out by Oracle were struct down.
- dminor 14y agoActually 2 of them survived until trial (1 still facing further review), but Google was deemed to not be infringing by the jury.
- WildUtah 14y agoThe judge ordered Oracle to limit themselves to their ten best patents for the case and Oracle chose ten. Google then went to the Patent and Trademark Office to try to get those ten struck down. Two out of ten survived review. Eight were declared to have been mistakenly granted. (One of those is still under appeal.) That rate -- eight out of ten of the very best selection of software patents obviously bogus -- is actually low; many more than eight out of ten are bogus on average, even when only considering the best ones. But that was all Google could get from the PTO. Note that your startup can't just go to the PTO like that when attacked with bogus patents -- it takes years and millions of dollars. Then the trial started with two remaining patents. But they were not the two that survived review. One survived review and was in the trial. One is rejected on review but can still be appealed and also was in the trial. And one was rejected on review and then re-accepted on review appeal, but had still been rejected when Oracle requested an acceleration of the trial date so they had to abandon the claims to get their earlier trial date. The other seven remain rejected.
- notatoad 14y agowhether patents survive litigation or not is irrelevant unless both parties have equivalent resources to spend on litigation. large companies can use their patents to bully small companies into paying licensing fees without having any fear of needing to defend their patents.
- chii 14y agowhich seems to be a problem with the patent invalidation process - it shouldn't cost anyone money to invalidate a patent. If a patent holder's patent is found to be invalidated, the costs for the entire process should be be beared by the patent holder!
- rcthompson 14y agoI thought part of the case was already a patent lawsuit. Our are you referring to the possibility that Oracle might get patents specifically on the Java APIs and sue with those?