9 ms·

Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing

128 points by bcn 11y ago

shmerl 11y ago
European courts declared APIs to be uncopyrightable.
- gpvos 11y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if the US tried to sneak copyright for APIs back in through "trade" agreements like TTIP.
  - tajen 11y ago
    ... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies. [1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and stakeholder dividends, because our VAT is 20%, mandatory contributions 46%, income tax 10-15%, land tax 5-10%, and laws are so circumvoluted that the tax accountant takes 45€ per paysheet per employee and charge about 2000€ yearly to the company. And the founder gets to spend >10% of his time on the phone with administrations or filling forms. I know the IRS of USA isn't much better, but I've lived in Australia and administrations make a difference on CEO time. [2] I'm aware of that the French government provides benefits for startups like CRI (Crédit Impot Recherche), which basically funds the PhDs you hire, but it wastes paperwork pumping money from companies into companies, requires a person to manage the grant, and isn't socially fair since it advantages those with a PhD. I could always blame TTIP agreements for advantaging Americans, but we, French people, tackle down our own companies on a massive scale. French people, please don't answer "Hey man the CCI can help you for your paperwork if you fill in this form and post it to this address and fill the file they return and the RSI will take a levy of 0,015% for training (truth) and ... form ... and ... paper ... document... and... minitax... organisme social... excess... deductible for SMEs if you tick the box 5UV and ..." Please. I just wanted to hire and code, and the Australian PAYG paysheet is frigging awesome.
    - markvdb 11y ago
      Well, you could always emigrate to Belgium: 33.99% corporate income tax, 37.84% social security contributions, 53.5% personal income tax most labour income above a cleaner's wage, 21% VAT, 10% real estate sales tax, 25% dividend tax, spectacular inheritance tax, combined with far too complex rules and regulations. That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...
      - Joeri 11y ago
        All of those carry caveats though. The effective corporate tax rate is 23.4% due to the various deductions, and the bigger you are the lower the percentage (which I find really unfair to small business, but it is the way it is). That personal income tax also includes county taxes, and you can choose to live somewhere that those taxes are near zero, so it can go down a lot depending on where you live. 21% VAT is pretty much standard across the EU anyway. And the inheritance tax in flanders is 9% for everything below 250.000 euro if you're in direct line of succession, high but not spectacular. Also, very low property taxes. Typically capital isn't taxed, only income is (from labor or capital). That's why despite such high rates of taxation there is a lot of capital in Belgium, because what you get (after taxes) you mostly can keep. But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).
    - rtpg 11y ago
      Where is your 46% coming from? Also, you might grossly underestimate how much of an absolute mess American taxes are to deal with. If you're complaining about paying your accountant 2000 euros a year...
      - sitkack 11y ago
        Taxes are in the same ballpark for all western countries. The real burden isn't the financial load, it is the complexity. I had a dream that my US state could take over all forms of taxation and have a single payer system (ha!) Business, personal, income, property, federal, all of it, one form, filed electronically and done by the state. Done.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
badlogic 11y ago
This advise by the Solicitor General hinges on an interpretation of section 102(b) of the copyright act. That section essentially says that "methods of operation" can't be copyrighted. The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.
- markvdb 11y ago
  I agree that one shouldn't ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence. ("The Solicitor General does not understand...") BUT! At the White House level, incompetence equals malice. We have every right to expect competence from a level as high as the White House.
  - RexRollman 11y ago
    Well, these are the same people who think you can safely backdoor encryption.
    - iwwr 11y ago
      I think they value power and control above safety.
    - harryh 11y ago
      Justice department officials and congressmen are most definitely not the same people.
      - bcg1 11y ago
        FBI is part of the justice dept. http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-privacy-and-public-safety-on-a-collision-course http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-p...
    - underscores 11y ago
      You can safely backdoor encryption. If you don't know how, well, you are just stupid (which is what I figured anyway).
meesterdude 11y ago
> and likened the Java API’s to Charles Dickens and other literary works Never, could have I ever predicted to one day see that as an actual excerpt from an article. By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s
- colechristensen 11y ago
  >By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical objects and towards the importance of pure information.
  - michaelvkpdx 11y ago
    Try eating "pure information". Or building shelter out of it. I hope this drags on forever. It's fun watching pigs in mud, aka lawyers in the Valley.
  - iSnow 11y ago
    >Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source. There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      As we move away from jobs-as-sustenance and toward a new social model where sustenance and income come from a broader range of sources that do not so directly correlate to your time spent working... the respect for and ownership of intellectual property may very well be a central tenant to life in modern society. It's not just about lawyers and multinationals dukeing it out.
tajen 11y ago
What happened of Judge Aslop [1]? As a foreigner, he's the only ever positive story I have heard about the American judicial system, since he was in charge of the Google vs Oracle trial, and he reproduced code himself to understand what was so unique about it. In fact, he decided there was only way to code some things, and ruled that the very small method everyone was arguing against can't be patented/copyrighted. And he ruled Oracle's API couldn't be copyrighted. So do this contradict his ruling? [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-court-and-java/ http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-c...
- carussell 11y ago
  > So do this contradict his ruling? Yes. As mentioned in the linked article, the Federal Circuit court overturned Alsup's ruling. The Alsup ruling came from a district court, and the Federal Circuit has the authority to overturn it. From there, the question can go on to the US Supreme Court.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ChairmanZach 11y ago
""[Google]'s Section 102(b) argument also suffers from a broader flaw." (this sentence transitions from the Administration's rejection of Google's suggestion that declaring code is inherently more functional and less expressive than implementing code to the DoJ's agreement with Oracle's lawyers on the purpose of Section 102(b))" That Google would be in the right by copying the declaring code of 27(!) different namespaces is nothing but crazy. http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/05/us-dept-of-justice-finds-googles.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/05/us-dept-of-justice-finds-...
- mikecmpbll 11y ago
  That FOSS Patents piece is the best commentary I've seen on the subject, thanks for bringing to my attention.
  - ChairmanZach 11y ago
    Finding non-shill opinions on this whole issue is quite hard. Once you check the facts of the case it's really quite open-and-shut in Oracle's favor.
    - cromwellian 11y ago
      Says the account that seems to have been specifically created to shill on this issue.
  - simplifier 11y ago
    Ah, Florian Mueller, a paid Oracle shill.
    - mikecmpbll 11y ago
      I don't care how involved he is in the case, I read his writing and I found it to be illuminating -- far more so than anything else I'd read on the subject. You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.
rodgerd 11y ago
Welp, IT industry had a good run. Time to wrap it up and hand it over to a couple of companies to run as a monopoly.
- coldpie 11y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand why this is a relatively minor story. This should be filling the front page of HN, on par with Jobs's death. If this ruling goes the wrong way, it will end software development as we know it, especially given the ridiculous length of copyright. Any reimplementation of an API? Illegal. IBM compatible PCs? Illegal. Any emulator? Illegal. Binary-compatible reimplementations? Illegal.
  - Ygg2 11y ago
    On the plus side, being a lawyer will be well paid.
caf 11y ago
Is the logical extension of this that anyone who's written a standard C library was in violation of Kernighan & Ritchie's copyright?
- e12e 11y ago
  That's not quite as interesting a comparison as you might think [ed: or maybe it is, now that I've thought it through... ;-) ]. Eg, from the Introduction to the second edition of "The C Programming Language": "Appendix A contains a language reference manual. The official statement of the syntax and semantics of C is the ANSI Standard itself.". Note that there's an ANSI standard for C -- and while I don't know what kind of license it is connected with off the top of my head -- it's very idea is to serve as a reference for implementers. Note also, that if I remember correctly, the whole thing (Google vs Oracle) was tied to what Microsoft did with their "Java that wasn't quite java" -- and that what Google did was something similar: they took the API, but didn't make "a java" -- they made Dalvik/Dex etc -- which only sort-a-kinda was java. As for "The C Programming Language", I can't find anything about license in my copy, and the copyright page doesn't exactly encourage re-use of the code-examples: "Copyright 1988, 1978 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... yada yada yada" So using some startling code such as "hello, world" -- as foundation for writing out something -- would probably not be legal. Even if the text does allude to the fact that a programmer is expected to draw upon the examples for inspiration. I'm not sure that alone is enough to grant fair use. It certainly seems that the examples in the book is similar to that in the java documentation -- and that neither gives an explicit license for use. Perhaps now AT&T owns everything, including Oracle?
  - bediger4000 11y ago
    You wrote: would probably not be legal. And there's the problem. "IP" laws and customs will be vague enough that the rest of us will have to totally steer clear of any "IP" problems. It costs far too much to get the "probably" erased or the "not legal" reversed. Litigation is for gamblers or aristocrats. Strict "IP" will only lead to less innovation, higher prices, and the creation of a semi-aristocracy, the "rightsholders".
lukeh 11y ago
Will be interesting to see if Microsoft sought a license from Apple for Project Islandwood...
estefan 11y ago
Maybe we should change the standard licences - GPL, MIT, etc. - to include a caveat "free to use without restriction... except by companies known as, or ever known as, Oracle Corporation"...
- maze-le 11y ago
  There are a few more exceptions, that come to my mind: Military, Intelligence Agencies and their subcontractors, TBTF-Banks, Disney, Sony ... ahrr and the list goes on
  - lmm 11y ago
    http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html
tzs 11y ago
(Reposting a question I asked in an earlier discussion, where I may have arrived too late for anyone to see it). That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands. What courts is this precedent for? Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X. For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out. Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it had just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too. So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling? Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?
- richardfontana 11y ago
  I believe the CAFC decision is not binding precedent for any court. If P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, even if there are patent claims as well (such that an appeal on a copyright issue would necessarily go to the CAFC), the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google is not binding precedent. Of course that does not mean that the district court would be likely to ignore the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google, but in principle it ought to be no more than persuasive, like any pertinent decision in a sibling circuit. On the question in your last paragraph, where P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th circuit, and there are only appeals of copyright issues, the appeal goes to the CAFC by statute.
woah 11y ago
Where does this leave SQL?
glomph 11y ago
Can someone give the background of why Google did what they did? Did they want to block Java compatibility or was that a side effect of some other objective?
- iwwr 11y ago
  Android started back when Sun was still independent and they failed to formalize the IP relationship with Sun. Google could have nabbed Sun if they wanted, but it was of no value to them when Oracle swooped in.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  They didn't want to pay Sun for the royalties they were asking for.
- Oletros 11y ago
  Google wanted to use a programming language with a lot of developers and decided to use Java
- tim333 11y ago
  History very approximately: > In November 2006, Sun open-sources Java. >In November 2007, Sun approves Google's use of Java in Android. > April of 2009, Oracle Corp. announced that it would be acquiring Sun Subsequently Oracle figured it could get some money from Google by requiring a license fee http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... It gets more complicted though, see http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... and a bunch of other stuff
  - glomph 11y ago
    Thanks.
Oletros 11y ago
And the more ironic here is that Google didn't copy Sun code, they used Apache Harmony implementation. The ones doing the copy were the programmers from Apache Foundation
lorddoig 11y ago
Excuse me, non-American here, but a passage from an article linked within states[0]: > The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a case, an influence which has caused the solicitor general to be dubbed the "tenth justice." Question: what the fuck? [0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/google-oracle-lawsuit-idUSL1N0Y32YG20150515
- estsauver 11y ago
  Third parties can generally file something called an "amicus brief" which is more or less "an opinion from a friend of the court." The court takes this opinion into account, it's not that Oracle and Google aren't listened to, it's that the Federal government basically gets a chance to say what it thinks.
- shit_parade2 11y ago
  SG sometimes become supreme court justices. But more generally the lawyer a justice will hear from the most during any given period is most likely the current t SG.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Note, they give more weight to the SG than other third parties, not -- at least per the given description -- more weight than actual litigants.
- bcg1 11y ago
  > Question: what the fuck? American here. We are aware of the problem, but due to high call volume and a totally corrupt/captured/entrenched corporate & government bureaucracy, you may experience long wait times.
matthewmcg 11y ago
The apostrophe should be removed from the heading.
moron4hire 11y ago
Why not let it happen? Why not just completely destroy everyone's understanding of how permission to use certain types of code work, and then force everyone to just abandon the US copyright system for software completely? Let this happen and just let it destroy the system from the inside out.
username3 11y ago
Naming things is one of the hard things in Computer Science.
username3 11y ago
APIs should be trademarked.
bcg1 11y ago
"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" -- Article I, Section 8, US Constitution (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_trans...) This is the exact opposite of promoting progress, and this type of behavior needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds. This is so far beyond what the Constitution authorizes Congress to oversee with respect to patent and copyright law that the specifics of the case are almost meaningless. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that anyone would stop developing APIs or turn them into trade secrets unless they can be copyrighted. 40+ years of sharing and software development prove otherwise. Time for the Federal Circuit and Justice Department to wake up, or for there to be an investigation into bribery and corruption in East Texas and DC. Preferably both.
bmvakili 11y ago
Seems ridiculous; my analogy: organization of volume of books; or classification of library; I can use any classification. I can go to Library of Congress; copy they way they organize their books; and implement same in my library. Why can't you do that with Open Source code?
jorgecastillo 11y ago
I know this has been said a lot of times already but I don't think we can say this enough. If Oracle wins, this will set a terrible precedent for software development. If any software company deserves to be qualified as evil, it is Oracle without a doubt.
maz20 11y ago
No suprise here --- 1) Google won the first case with Alsup. This demonstrates that some lower courts can have a better understanding of the law and are willing to spend time applying logic to these things. 2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get. The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too. So, even if it goes to the Supreme Court, we're pretty much guaranteed Oracle will win that too. See, the whole problem of this case rests in that you have to "spend time" and "apply logic" to agree with Google's position. Which, pretty much throws out any hope of getting a "higher court" (or higher-anybody) to adopt Google's stance on the issue. Actually the poster "tajen" pretty much hit the nail on the head for this issue -- essentially, adopting Google's stance unfortunately requires a degree of competence and logical commitment beyond the comprehension of most higher officials. So, even if this goes to the Supreme Court Oracle has this case pretty much won...
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > 2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get. I don't know that that's the case; even if we assume that the CAFC is wrong from the perspective of application of the law (rather than merely correctly applying the law to reach an outcome that we don't like), certainly, lots of observers think that the CAFC is an especially problematic court among Courts of Appeal, and even on the issues that it specializes in (which copyright is not one of; Oracle v. Google got there instead of the 9th Circuit because of patent issues in the case, even though the thing we're all focused on is a copyright issue.) So, I don't think that "the CAFC messed this up", even if taken as gospel, necessarily demonstrates a relation between "level" of court and competence. > The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too. Since the DoJ isn't a higher court than the CAFC, I don't see how you can reasonably say that.
  - maz20 11y ago
    DOJ is not a court but it is a "high official" (or "official body"). What I was stating was that the "higher you go" -- in terms of official government bodies, whether they're courts, or something else -- the less competent I would expect them to be. You can simply say, 1) "Oracle owns Java" 2) "APIs are part of Java" 3) "Google uses Java APIs" 4) Therefore, "Google uses something Oracle owns" so Oracle should win this case Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance. But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue? Deep enough to understand Google's position?

128 points by bcn 11y ago

shmerl 11y ago

European courts declared APIs to be uncopyrightable.

gpvos 11y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the US tried to sneak copyright for APIs back in through "trade" agreements like TTIP.
- tajen 11y ago
  ... and API copyright would give an excellent commercial advantage to US companies over Europe, since they have more startups than we have. On the other hand, my government (France) doesn't do much to help startups [1][2], so it's only fair that we get invaded by talented foreign companies. [1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and stakeholder dividends, because our VAT is 20%, mandatory contributions 46%, income tax 10-15%, land tax 5-10%, and laws are so circumvoluted that the tax accountant takes 45€ per paysheet per employee and charge about 2000€ yearly to the company. And the founder gets to spend >10% of his time on the phone with administrations or filling forms. I know the IRS of USA isn't much better, but I've lived in Australia and administrations make a difference on CEO time. [2] I'm aware of that the French government provides benefits for startups like CRI (Crédit Impot Recherche), which basically funds the PhDs you hire, but it wastes paperwork pumping money from companies into companies, requires a person to manage the grant, and isn't socially fair since it advantages those with a PhD. I could always blame TTIP agreements for advantaging Americans, but we, French people, tackle down our own companies on a massive scale. French people, please don't answer "Hey man the CCI can help you for your paperwork if you fill in this form and post it to this address and fill the file they return and the RSI will take a levy of 0,015% for training (truth) and ... form ... and ... paper ... document... and... minitax... organisme social... excess... deductible for SMEs if you tick the box 5UV and ..." Please. I just wanted to hire and code, and the Australian PAYG paysheet is frigging awesome.
  - markvdb 11y ago
    Well, you could always emigrate to Belgium: 33.99% corporate income tax, 37.84% social security contributions, 53.5% personal income tax most labour income above a cleaner's wage, 21% VAT, 10% real estate sales tax, 25% dividend tax, spectacular inheritance tax, combined with far too complex rules and regulations. That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...
    - Joeri 11y ago
      All of those carry caveats though. The effective corporate tax rate is 23.4% due to the various deductions, and the bigger you are the lower the percentage (which I find really unfair to small business, but it is the way it is). That personal income tax also includes county taxes, and you can choose to live somewhere that those taxes are near zero, so it can go down a lot depending on where you live. 21% VAT is pretty much standard across the EU anyway. And the inheritance tax in flanders is 9% for everything below 250.000 euro if you're in direct line of succession, high but not spectacular. Also, very low property taxes. Typically capital isn't taxed, only income is (from labor or capital). That's why despite such high rates of taxation there is a lot of capital in Belgium, because what you get (after taxes) you mostly can keep. But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).
  - rtpg 11y ago
    Where is your 46% coming from? Also, you might grossly underestimate how much of an absolute mess American taxes are to deal with. If you're complaining about paying your accountant 2000 euros a year...
    - sitkack 11y ago
      Taxes are in the same ballpark for all western countries. The real burden isn't the financial load, it is the complexity. I had a dream that my US state could take over all forms of taxation and have a single payer system (ha!) Business, personal, income, property, federal, all of it, one form, filed electronically and done by the state. Done.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

badlogic 11y ago

This advise by the Solicitor General hinges on an interpretation of section 102(b) of the copyright act. That section essentially says that "methods of operation" can't be copyrighted. The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.

markvdb 11y ago
I agree that one shouldn't ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to incompetence. ("The Solicitor General does not understand...") BUT! At the White House level, incompetence equals malice. We have every right to expect competence from a level as high as the White House.
- RexRollman 11y ago
  Well, these are the same people who think you can safely backdoor encryption.
  - iwwr 11y ago
    I think they value power and control above safety.
  - harryh 11y ago
    Justice department officials and congressmen are most definitely not the same people.
    - bcg1 11y ago
      FBI is part of the justice dept. http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-privacy-and-public-safety-on-a-collision-course http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-p...
  - underscores 11y ago
    You can safely backdoor encryption. If you don't know how, well, you are just stupid (which is what I figured anyway).

meesterdude 11y ago

> and likened the Java API’s to Charles Dickens and other literary works Never, could have I ever predicted to one day see that as an actual excerpt from an article. By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s

colechristensen 11y ago
>By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical objects and towards the importance of pure information.
- michaelvkpdx 11y ago
  Try eating "pure information". Or building shelter out of it. I hope this drags on forever. It's fun watching pigs in mud, aka lawyers in the Valley.
- iSnow 11y ago
  >Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source. There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    As we move away from jobs-as-sustenance and toward a new social model where sustenance and income come from a broader range of sources that do not so directly correlate to your time spent working... the respect for and ownership of intellectual property may very well be a central tenant to life in modern society. It's not just about lawyers and multinationals dukeing it out.

tajen 11y ago

What happened of Judge Aslop [1]? As a foreigner, he's the only ever positive story I have heard about the American judicial system, since he was in charge of the Google vs Oracle trial, and he reproduced code himself to understand what was so unique about it. In fact, he decided there was only way to code some things, and ruled that the very small method everyone was arguing against can't be patented/copyrighted. And he ruled Oracle's API couldn't be copyrighted. So do this contradict his ruling? [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-court-and-java/ http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-c...

carussell 11y ago
> So do this contradict his ruling? Yes. As mentioned in the linked article, the Federal Circuit court overturned Alsup's ruling. The Alsup ruling came from a district court, and the Federal Circuit has the authority to overturn it. From there, the question can go on to the US Supreme Court.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ChairmanZach 11y ago

""[Google]'s Section 102(b) argument also suffers from a broader flaw." (this sentence transitions from the Administration's rejection of Google's suggestion that declaring code is inherently more functional and less expressive than implementing code to the DoJ's agreement with Oracle's lawyers on the purpose of Section 102(b))" That Google would be in the right by copying the declaring code of 27(!) different namespaces is nothing but crazy. http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/05/us-dept-of-justice-finds-googles.html http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/05/us-dept-of-justice-finds-...

mikecmpbll 11y ago
That FOSS Patents piece is the best commentary I've seen on the subject, thanks for bringing to my attention.
- ChairmanZach 11y ago
  Finding non-shill opinions on this whole issue is quite hard. Once you check the facts of the case it's really quite open-and-shut in Oracle's favor.
  - cromwellian 11y ago
    Says the account that seems to have been specifically created to shill on this issue.
- simplifier 11y ago
  Ah, Florian Mueller, a paid Oracle shill.
  - mikecmpbll 11y ago
    I don't care how involved he is in the case, I read his writing and I found it to be illuminating -- far more so than anything else I'd read on the subject. You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.

rodgerd 11y ago

Welp, IT industry had a good run. Time to wrap it up and hand it over to a couple of companies to run as a monopoly.

coldpie 11y ago
Yeah, I don't understand why this is a relatively minor story. This should be filling the front page of HN, on par with Jobs's death. If this ruling goes the wrong way, it will end software development as we know it, especially given the ridiculous length of copyright. Any reimplementation of an API? Illegal. IBM compatible PCs? Illegal. Any emulator? Illegal. Binary-compatible reimplementations? Illegal.
- Ygg2 11y ago
  On the plus side, being a lawyer will be well paid.

caf 11y ago

Is the logical extension of this that anyone who's written a standard C library was in violation of Kernighan & Ritchie's copyright?

e12e 11y ago
That's not quite as interesting a comparison as you might think [ed: or maybe it is, now that I've thought it through... ;-) ]. Eg, from the Introduction to the second edition of "The C Programming Language": "Appendix A contains a language reference manual. The official statement of the syntax and semantics of C is the ANSI Standard itself.". Note that there's an ANSI standard for C -- and while I don't know what kind of license it is connected with off the top of my head -- it's very idea is to serve as a reference for implementers. Note also, that if I remember correctly, the whole thing (Google vs Oracle) was tied to what Microsoft did with their "Java that wasn't quite java" -- and that what Google did was something similar: they took the API, but didn't make "a java" -- they made Dalvik/Dex etc -- which only sort-a-kinda was java. As for "The C Programming Language", I can't find anything about license in my copy, and the copyright page doesn't exactly encourage re-use of the code-examples: "Copyright 1988, 1978 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... yada yada yada" So using some startling code such as "hello, world" -- as foundation for writing out something -- would probably not be legal. Even if the text does allude to the fact that a programmer is expected to draw upon the examples for inspiration. I'm not sure that alone is enough to grant fair use. It certainly seems that the examples in the book is similar to that in the java documentation -- and that neither gives an explicit license for use. Perhaps now AT&T owns everything, including Oracle?
- bediger4000 11y ago
  You wrote: would probably not be legal. And there's the problem. "IP" laws and customs will be vague enough that the rest of us will have to totally steer clear of any "IP" problems. It costs far too much to get the "probably" erased or the "not legal" reversed. Litigation is for gamblers or aristocrats. Strict "IP" will only lead to less innovation, higher prices, and the creation of a semi-aristocracy, the "rightsholders".

lukeh 11y ago

Will be interesting to see if Microsoft sought a license from Apple for Project Islandwood...

estefan 11y ago

Maybe we should change the standard licences - GPL, MIT, etc. - to include a caveat "free to use without restriction... except by companies known as, or ever known as, Oracle Corporation"...

maze-le 11y ago
There are a few more exceptions, that come to my mind: Military, Intelligence Agencies and their subcontractors, TBTF-Banks, Disney, Sony ... ahrr and the list goes on
- lmm 11y ago
  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.en.html

tzs 11y ago

(Reposting a question I asked in an earlier discussion, where I may have arrived too late for anyone to see it). That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands. What courts is this precedent for? Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X. For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out. Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it had just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too. So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling? Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?

richardfontana 11y ago
I believe the CAFC decision is not binding precedent for any court. If P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, even if there are patent claims as well (such that an appeal on a copyright issue would necessarily go to the CAFC), the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google is not binding precedent. Of course that does not mean that the district court would be likely to ignore the CAFC decision in Oracle v. Google, but in principle it ought to be no more than persuasive, like any pertinent decision in a sibling circuit. On the question in your last paragraph, where P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th circuit, and there are only appeals of copyright issues, the appeal goes to the CAFC by statute.

woah 11y ago

Where does this leave SQL?

glomph 11y ago

Can someone give the background of why Google did what they did? Did they want to block Java compatibility or was that a side effect of some other objective?

iwwr 11y ago
Android started back when Sun was still independent and they failed to formalize the IP relationship with Sun. Google could have nabbed Sun if they wanted, but it was of no value to them when Oracle swooped in.
pjmlp 11y ago
They didn't want to pay Sun for the royalties they were asking for.
Oletros 11y ago
Google wanted to use a programming language with a lot of developers and decided to use Java
tim333 11y ago
History very approximately: > In November 2006, Sun open-sources Java. >In November 2007, Sun approves Google's use of Java in Android. > April of 2009, Oracle Corp. announced that it would be acquiring Sun Subsequently Oracle figured it could get some money from Google by requiring a license fee http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... It gets more complicted though, see http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-android-as-told-by-google/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... and a bunch of other stuff
- glomph 11y ago
  Thanks.

Oletros 11y ago

And the more ironic here is that Google didn't copy Sun code, they used Apache Harmony implementation. The ones doing the copy were the programmers from Apache Foundation

lorddoig 11y ago

Excuse me, non-American here, but a passage from an article linked within states[0]: > The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a case, an influence which has caused the solicitor general to be dubbed the "tenth justice." Question: what the fuck? [0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/google-oracle-lawsuit-idUSL1N0Y32YG20150515

estsauver 11y ago
Third parties can generally file something called an "amicus brief" which is more or less "an opinion from a friend of the court." The court takes this opinion into account, it's not that Oracle and Google aren't listened to, it's that the Federal government basically gets a chance to say what it thinks.
shit_parade2 11y ago
SG sometimes become supreme court justices. But more generally the lawyer a justice will hear from the most during any given period is most likely the current t SG.
dragonwriter 11y ago
Note, they give more weight to the SG than other third parties, not -- at least per the given description -- more weight than actual litigants.
bcg1 11y ago
> Question: what the fuck? American here. We are aware of the problem, but due to high call volume and a totally corrupt/captured/entrenched corporate & government bureaucracy, you may experience long wait times.

matthewmcg 11y ago

The apostrophe should be removed from the heading.

moron4hire 11y ago

Why not let it happen? Why not just completely destroy everyone's understanding of how permission to use certain types of code work, and then force everyone to just abandon the US copyright system for software completely? Let this happen and just let it destroy the system from the inside out.

username3 11y ago

Naming things is one of the hard things in Computer Science.

username3 11y ago

APIs should be trademarked.

bcg1 11y ago

"The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" -- Article I, Section 8, US Constitution (http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_trans...) This is the exact opposite of promoting progress, and this type of behavior needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds. This is so far beyond what the Constitution authorizes Congress to oversee with respect to patent and copyright law that the specifics of the case are almost meaningless. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that anyone would stop developing APIs or turn them into trade secrets unless they can be copyrighted. 40+ years of sharing and software development prove otherwise. Time for the Federal Circuit and Justice Department to wake up, or for there to be an investigation into bribery and corruption in East Texas and DC. Preferably both.

bmvakili 11y ago

Seems ridiculous; my analogy: organization of volume of books; or classification of library; I can use any classification. I can go to Library of Congress; copy they way they organize their books; and implement same in my library. Why can't you do that with Open Source code?

jorgecastillo 11y ago

I know this has been said a lot of times already but I don't think we can say this enough. If Oracle wins, this will set a terrible precedent for software development. If any software company deserves to be qualified as evil, it is Oracle without a doubt.

maz20 11y ago

No suprise here --- 1) Google won the first case with Alsup. This demonstrates that some lower courts can have a better understanding of the law and are willing to spend time applying logic to these things. 2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get. The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too. So, even if it goes to the Supreme Court, we're pretty much guaranteed Oracle will win that too. See, the whole problem of this case rests in that you have to "spend time" and "apply logic" to agree with Google's position. Which, pretty much throws out any hope of getting a "higher court" (or higher-anybody) to adopt Google's stance on the issue. Actually the poster "tajen" pretty much hit the nail on the head for this issue -- essentially, adopting Google's stance unfortunately requires a degree of competence and logical commitment beyond the comprehension of most higher officials. So, even if this goes to the Supreme Court Oracle has this case pretty much won...

dragonwriter 11y ago
> 2) Oracle won in a higher court. At this point, we see a trend that the higher you go, the more political and less competent the courts get. I don't know that that's the case; even if we assume that the CAFC is wrong from the perspective of application of the law (rather than merely correctly applying the law to reach an outcome that we don't like), certainly, lots of observers think that the CAFC is an especially problematic court among Courts of Appeal, and even on the issues that it specializes in (which copyright is not one of; Oracle v. Google got there instead of the 9th Circuit because of patent issues in the case, even though the thing we're all focused on is a copyright issue.) So, I don't think that "the CAFC messed this up", even if taken as gospel, necessarily demonstrates a relation between "level" of court and competence. > The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too. Since the DoJ isn't a higher court than the CAFC, I don't see how you can reasonably say that.
- maz20 11y ago
  DOJ is not a court but it is a "high official" (or "official body"). What I was stating was that the "higher you go" -- in terms of official government bodies, whether they're courts, or something else -- the less competent I would expect them to be. You can simply say, 1) "Oracle owns Java" 2) "APIs are part of Java" 3) "Google uses Java APIs" 4) Therefore, "Google uses something Oracle owns" so Oracle should win this case Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance. But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue? Deep enough to understand Google's position?