[License-review] For Approval: Scripting Free Software License, Version 1.3.6 (S-FSL v1.3.6)

Rick Moen rick at linuxmafia.com
Sat Nov 16 19:41:28 UTC 2013


In-Reply-To: <5287543A.705 at gmail.com>
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.
X-Mas: Bah humbug.

Quoting Elmar Stellnberger (estellnb at gmail.com):

> Thanks for that addition. Sounds very logical to me.
> Yes, I think I have heard it once too: interfaces are definitely not
> protected by copyright law.

It's not quite that cut and dried in USA law.  You would want to read
Computer Associates v. Altai to get the reasoning that applies tests for
when literal and non-literal copying infringes or doesn't, and the
abstraction-filtration-comparison test for non-literal copying, not to
mention articulating the idea/expression dichotomy.  The latter is
pursuant to 17 U.S.C. 102(b):

  In no case does copyright protection for any original work of 
  authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method
  of operation, concept, principle, or discovery....

(Because ideas, procedures, etc. are potentially eligible for _patents_,
they cannot fall simultaneously under copyrights.)

CAI v. Altai built on the earlier Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland
International case, likewise worth reading.  The CAI case's
abstraction-filtration-comparison  test replaced and jettisoned an
earlier case's 'structure, sequence, and organization' test (Whelan
Associates inc. v.  Jaslow Dental Laboratory, Inc.).  

Also, under the somewhat narrow circumstances of the recent case Oracle
America, Inc. v.  Google, Inc. that criterion gave dramatic results in
favour of the defendent -- but the facts of that case were unusual and
determined the API ruling.  Quoting Judge Alsup's opinion:

  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. It does not matter that the declaration or method
  header lines are identical.

  Under the rules of Java, they must be identical to declare a method
  specifying the same functionality -- even when the implementation is
  different. When there is only one way to express an idea or function,
  then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that
  expression. And, while the Android method and class names could have
  been different from the names of their counterparts in Java and still
  have worked, copyright protection never extends to names or short
  phrases as a matter of law.

Here's a pretty good layman-accessible rundown:
http://www.aaronsanderslaw.com/blog/copyright-protection-of-apis-after-oracle-v-google-poppin-a-whelan

And, if you want to collect the whole set of leading cases on the
subject, read Sega v. Accolade and Sony v. Connectix on the concepts of
'intermediate copying' and on elements required for
compatibility/interpoperability.  ;->


In the EU, by contrast, a more sweeping ruling (SAS Institute Inc. v World
Programming Ltd.) by the EU Court of Justice has recently held that
'neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming
language and the format of data files used in a computer program in
order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of
expression.  Accordingly, they do not enjoy copyright protection.'
http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2012-05/cp120053en.pdf




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