[Discuss] can you copyright an API?

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 05/31/2012 07:09 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> Stephen Ronan wrote:
>> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227643/Judge_clears_Google_of_Java_copyright_infringement
> Apparently you can't copyright an API...
>
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/05/google-wins-crucial-api-ruling-oracles-case-decimated/
>
>   It's only the code itself--not the "how-to" instructions represented
>   by APIs--that can be the subject of a copyright claim, ruled Judge
>   William Alsup. "So long as the specific code used to implement a
>   method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write
>   his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or
>   specification of any methods used in the Java API," wrote the judge.
>   [...]
>   Alsup compared APIs to a library, with each package as a bookshelf in
>   the library, each class a book on the shelf, and each method a chapter
>   out of a how-to book. "As to the 37 packages, the Java and Android
>   libraries are organized in the same basic way but all of the chapters
>   in Android have been written with implementations different from Java
>   but solving the same problems and providing the same functions." The
>   declarations, or headers, "must be identical to carry out the given
>   function," wrote Alsup.
>   [...]
>   Alsup's ruling comes less than a month after a European court made a
>   decision along the same lines, finding that programming APIs can't be
>   copyrighted because it would "monopolize ideas."
>   [...]
>   If Oracle had won, it would have been a novel case of a company being
>   able to essentially reverse the open-source process by making any
>   commercial use of Java a pay-to-play endeavor.
I've been watching this on Groklaw where they also have some
transcripts. Google had actually copied (and admitted) 7 lines of code,
but the judge made a comment that he could have written the exact 7
lines of code himself..

One of the things I find interesting is that Oracle's attorneys are the
ones who represented both SCO (Boise Schiller) and Novell (Morrison
Forster). Since Oracle is likely to appeal, this will be carried on for
a while.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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