The API headers are copyrighted, and any program that uses them is a derivative work. However, the license you accept in using the copyrighted work allows you t

The API headers are copyrighted, and any program that uses them is a derivative work. However, the license you accept in using the copyrighted work allows you to do so, with some conditions. Google chose to ignore those conditions. API headers being copyrightable protects a lot of GPL'd code too, this ruling protects FOSS as much as it hurts Java.