copyrightable APIs? (was RE: namespace protection compatible wit

[Rod Dixon]

This is the issue I was hinting at. I do not believe that as a general
matter that APIs should be copyrightable under U.S. copyright law since
section 102(b) of the Copyright Act should exclude APIs from copyright
subject matter. Having said that, I admit the issue seems unresolved since
both Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are two well known developers who
claim copyright interests in APIs; Microsoft for Windows, and Sun for
Java.

Rod


On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Angelo Schneider wrote:

> Hi!
>
> In Europe APIs are not "copyright able".
> No idea about the US.
>
> However if you publich them in a book, the book of course is
> copyrighted.
> However you can not prevent anyone to write a software against a given
> API.
> Same is true for data formats. (In Europe dataformats e.g. a flat file
> format for a word processor are not copyright able)
>
> Regards,
>      Angelo
>
> Forrest J Cavalier III wrote:
> >
> > > ----------
> > > Von:  Forrest J Cavalier III[SMTP:FORREST at MIBSOFTWARE.COM]
> > > Gesendet:     Freitag, 20. April 2001 13:50:06
> > > An:   license-discuss at opensource.org
> > > Cc:   forrest at mibsoftware.com
> > > Betreff:      copyrightable APIs? (was RE: namespace protection compatible wit
> > > Diese Nachricht wurde automatisch von einer Regel weitergeleitet.
> > >
> > How can you copyright an API?  Isn't it simply a
> > collection of facts?
> >
> > Perhaps you could copyright the formal parameter
> > names, and certainly the documentation in a header
> > file.
> >
> > But the facts of
> >      function name,
> >      return type(s)
> >      parameter type(s)
> > are just facts.  There is no creative expression involved.
> >
> > Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software  Voice 570-992-8824
> > http://www.rocketaware.com/ has over 30,000 links to
> > source, libraries, functions, applications, and documentation.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Angelo Schneider         OOAD/UML         Angelo.Schneider at oomentor.de
> Putlitzstr. 24       Patterns/FrameWorks          Fon: +49 721 9812465
> 76137 Karlsruhe           C++/JAVA                Fax: +49 721 9812467
>