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There's be no PC revolution if this ruling existed in the 80s. http://ckolderup.tumblr.com/post/48362660527/phoenix-technologies-cloning-the-ibm-pc-bios http:/

There's be no PC revolution if this ruling existed in the 80s. http://ckolderup.tumblr.com/post/48362660527/phoenix-technologies-cloning-the-ibm-pc-bios http://ckolderup.tumblr.com/post/48362660527/phoenix-technol... The entrenched players benefited from an enormously more free era of software development, we now live in an age where every line of code, every UI widget, every pixel, is going to be patented and copyrighted. If you develop any code and achieve any success at all, there will always be a sword hanging over you. The whole system is going to have to implode before it will be reformed. Last year 92% of patent applications were approved. Every area of human thought is being fenced off.

syntern 13y ago
Or, you can just move to a more reasonable region. I'm expecting more startups coming from the EU and Asia because of the difference in regulations. (And while they will be sued in the US and other places, they will have plenty of business opportunities elsewhere).
- cromwellian 13y ago
  That will work so long as no world-wide treaty synchronizes the shitty copyright/patent laws across nations.
  - undersuit 13y ago
    You'd have to do that in secret if you didn't want massive backlash.
  - cromwellian 13y ago
    You mean do it in secret like this? http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/13/5099236/wikileaks-publishes-leaked-draft-of-tpp http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/13/5099236/wikileaks-publish...
  - lern_too_spel 13y ago
    According to the Berne Convention, signatory countries must recognize the copyright of a work in its country of origin. I think that means US copyright law on Oracle's works apply in all 167 signatory countries, but maybe an IP lawyer will chime in to correct me.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- logn 13y ago
  If you have US customers you can be sued in the US.
  - briantakita 13y ago
    Even though US customers benefit from your service. It's funny & sad how US customers are seen as property of corporations. That is why Free Software is important.
pron 13y ago
No need to get hysterical. BIOS is not the same as a software API, and copyright is not the same as patents. I think software patents are terrible, but I definitely want software to be copyrighted. Regarding the copyrightability of APIs, I don't think either ruling has much of an effect in today's ecosystem.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  If not BIOS, consider the operating systems themselves. If AT&T had strong copyright claims on the "APIs" that make up the system calls of UNIX, for example there goes Linux (and essentially the entire GNU and BSD projects as well), there goes modern MacOS, etc, and the reverberations would be enormous even with fully closed sourced OSes like Windows... With strong copyright on APIs there, essentially, goes the Internet as we know it when there isn't a clear path of UNIX->BSD/POSIX->sockets for everyone to copy (and thus be interoperable with each other). And even if we shift the strong copyright event later into the 90s then consider the modern web, if Netscape (which at one point was a very different entity than today's Mozilla in terms of openness) had a strong copyright on the definition of JavaScript's APIs? Or if nobody dared implement their own XMLHttpRequest for fear of Microsoft's API copyright? This is something developers (and anyone who cares about technology, really) should absolutely be hysterical about.
  - pron 13y ago
    Unless the reason those technologies spread is precisely because no one had strong claims, or no one chose to pursue protection. If Netscape had chosen to make JS proprietary, JS wouldn't have become a de-facto standard. I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. But I could be wrong on that. If you know of such APIs, I'd love to know which ones are in danger.
    - georgemcbay 13y ago
      Again I direct you towards all of the APIs that make up a UNIX-compatible system, which by the logic of this ruling is an API definition whose copyright is currently mostly owned by Novell (since they own the old AT&T rights) and yet is largely cloned in Linux, all the various BSDs, MacOS/Darwin, Android, etc, etc, etc. In a lot of ways the situation being defined by this ruling is way worse than patents given that copyright is essentially infinite these days (pseudo-time-limited, but constantly being extended due to the lobbying efforts of Disney, et al) whereas at least patents, as harmful as they are to overall software industry progress, run out after a couple of decades.
DanBC 13y ago
Lotus started look and feel lawsuits in 1987. There was plenty of effort to lock people out of competing; they just didn't have software patents back then.

syntern 13y ago

Or, you can just move to a more reasonable region. I'm expecting more startups coming from the EU and Asia because of the difference in regulations. (And while they will be sued in the US and other places, they will have plenty of business opportunities elsewhere).

cromwellian 13y ago
That will work so long as no world-wide treaty synchronizes the shitty copyright/patent laws across nations.
- undersuit 13y ago
  You'd have to do that in secret if you didn't want massive backlash.
- cromwellian 13y ago
  You mean do it in secret like this? http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/13/5099236/wikileaks-publishes-leaked-draft-of-tpp http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/13/5099236/wikileaks-publish...
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
  According to the Berne Convention, signatory countries must recognize the copyright of a work in its country of origin. I think that means US copyright law on Oracle's works apply in all 167 signatory countries, but maybe an IP lawyer will chime in to correct me.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
logn 13y ago
If you have US customers you can be sued in the US.
- briantakita 13y ago
  Even though US customers benefit from your service. It's funny & sad how US customers are seen as property of corporations. That is why Free Software is important.

pron 13y ago

No need to get hysterical. BIOS is not the same as a software API, and copyright is not the same as patents. I think software patents are terrible, but I definitely want software to be copyrighted. Regarding the copyrightability of APIs, I don't think either ruling has much of an effect in today's ecosystem.

georgemcbay 13y ago
If not BIOS, consider the operating systems themselves. If AT&T had strong copyright claims on the "APIs" that make up the system calls of UNIX, for example there goes Linux (and essentially the entire GNU and BSD projects as well), there goes modern MacOS, etc, and the reverberations would be enormous even with fully closed sourced OSes like Windows... With strong copyright on APIs there, essentially, goes the Internet as we know it when there isn't a clear path of UNIX->BSD/POSIX->sockets for everyone to copy (and thus be interoperable with each other). And even if we shift the strong copyright event later into the 90s then consider the modern web, if Netscape (which at one point was a very different entity than today's Mozilla in terms of openness) had a strong copyright on the definition of JavaScript's APIs? Or if nobody dared implement their own XMLHttpRequest for fear of Microsoft's API copyright? This is something developers (and anyone who cares about technology, really) should absolutely be hysterical about.
- pron 13y ago
  Unless the reason those technologies spread is precisely because no one had strong claims, or no one chose to pursue protection. If Netscape had chosen to make JS proprietary, JS wouldn't have become a de-facto standard. I am not aware of any significant proprietary API today that is in widespread use, and is cloned by FOSS. But I could be wrong on that. If you know of such APIs, I'd love to know which ones are in danger.
  - georgemcbay 13y ago
    Again I direct you towards all of the APIs that make up a UNIX-compatible system, which by the logic of this ruling is an API definition whose copyright is currently mostly owned by Novell (since they own the old AT&T rights) and yet is largely cloned in Linux, all the various BSDs, MacOS/Darwin, Android, etc, etc, etc. In a lot of ways the situation being defined by this ruling is way worse than patents given that copyright is essentially infinite these days (pseudo-time-limited, but constantly being extended due to the lobbying efforts of Disney, et al) whereas at least patents, as harmful as they are to overall software industry progress, run out after a couple of decades.

DanBC 13y ago

Lotus started look and feel lawsuits in 1987. There was plenty of effort to lock people out of competing; they just didn't have software patents back then.