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Old 23rd May 2014
censored censored is offline
Swen Tnavelerri
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 45
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Quote:
...First, Oracle argues that the district court erred in concluding that each line of declaring source code is completely unprotected under the merger and short phrases doctrines. Google responds that Oracle waived...
Quote:
...the Android method and class names could have been different from the names of their counterparts in Java and still have worked.” Copyrightability Decision, 872 F. Supp. 2d at 976. Because “alternative expressions [we]re available,” there is no merger. See Atari, 975 F.2d at 840 ...
Quote:
... But, as the court acknowl- edged, nothing prevented Google from writing its own declaring code, along with its own implementing code, to achieve the same result. In such circumstances, the chosen expression simply does not merge with the idea being expressed...
These are quotes from the ruling (United States court of appeals for the federal circuit (case 2013-1021, -1022)).

http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/...5-7-2014.1.PDF

In the first quote, Oracle seems to be saying that the merger doctrine (the basis for what programmers usually think of as "API freedom" - something needed for interoperability, and not subject to copyright) does not necessarily exempt the names of elements in API declarations, and/or the declarative line as a whole, from copyright. Statements in the court's opinion refine this to the names of methods and classes. If this holds, then there is no longer any API freedom in the manner that programmers have accepted it for thirty years.

The second quote expresses this idea (that really kills the effective sharing of APIs) - put in the words of the appellate court that sent the case back to trial for "fair use". It means the court interprets the idea of what the API does as exempt from copyright, but not the names of the specific methods and classes. Without the ability to use the specific names and classes of the API, there is no interoperability. To that - the court says that interoperability (a doctrine that exempts some copyright) is a fair use issue. Nightmare! What constitutes "fair use" is vague and almost always requires court time to decipher. A good law or doctrine minimizes the amount of time citizens have to spend in courtrooms.

Could "fair use" then be more than exemption based upon a "small amount" that was copied and needed to have effective "public discourse" - and now extend to ideas such as "interoperability" of software? Perhaps, but in that case would usage be hamstrung by some vague limit as to how much you could create interoperability with? Like the fair use of news articles?

This issue is huge. Oh yeah. I'm not a lawyer. Disregard my opinion.

Last edited by censored; 23rd May 2014 at 06:41 PM.
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