[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Henrik Ingo]

On Sun, Jul 7, 2019 at 5:36 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
wrote:

>
> On 7/7/2019 4:23 AM, Henrik Ingo wrote:
>
> While I haven't closely followed the details of Oracle vs Google, purely
> from a layman and business standpoint it seems clear that Google did create
> Android / Dalvik exactly to be interoperable with Java. This means one can
> run the same Java source code on either platform and the java.* namespace
> offers the same packages and functionality.
>
> I believe this is an important distinction that is often missed. No,
> Android is not compatible with Java and was not meant to be. "As we noted
> in the prior appeal, however, Google did not seek to foster any
> 'inter-system consistency' between its platform and Oracle's Java platform.
> Oracle, 750 F.3d at 1371. And Google does not rely on any interoperability
> arguments in this appeal." *Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google LLC*, 886 F.3d
> 1179, 1206 (Fed. Cir. 2018). If the Supreme Court doesn't go beyond its
> remit in *Google v. Oracle*, the earlier cases holding that this type of
> use is a fair use will still be good law.
>
>
This is quoting Oracle, right?

I don't know why Google would not have focused on this argument in their
appeal, however I don't see that the kind of threshold painted by Oracle is
in any way meaningful to the real world. By the same logic one could argue
that J2ME, J2SE and J2EE are not compatible with each other. Which is true,
but also silly.

It's a fact that I can copy some Java code to Android, and all the strings
and integers continue to work. This is interoperability. 100%
interoperability is very rare anyway. For example, it's unlikely that you
could just swap one relational database for another, even if both implement
the same SQL standard. So it would be unhelpful for a court to set the bar
for interoperability higher than what is the norm and expectation for real
world use cases.


> But importantly, interoperability also goes the other way: Android was
> compatible with the millions of developers familiar with Java syntax and
> standard libraries.
>
> This is Google's argument why it is a fair use.
>
>
Aren't these separate questions:
1) An API (or in any case the Java standard library API) is purely
functional so cannot be copyrighted, vs
2) an API can be copyrighted but for interoperability purposes fair use
exceptions may apply on a case by case basis. I thought the appeal is still
about #1 and only if Oracle wins will the litigation about #2 start?

henrik
-- 
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