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From TechDirt: Top Oracle Lawyer Attempting to Gaslight Entire Software Community: Insists APIs are Executable:
Last week, the Solicitor General of the White House weighed in on Google's request for the Supreme Court to overturn the Federal Circuit's ridiculously confused ruling in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs (and whether or not repurposing them is fair use). Not surprisingly, as the Solicitor General has been siding with Oracle all along, it suggests that the Supreme Court not hear the case. Of course, it does so by completely misrepresenting what's at stake in the case -- pretending that this is about whether or not software source code is copyright-eligible
[...] Except... that's not what this case is about. Even remotely. Literally no one denies that software source code is subject to copyright. The question is whether or not an Application Programming Interface -- an API -- is subject to copyright. As we've been saying from the beginning, the most frustrating thing about this entire case is that you have non-technically savvy lawyers and judges simply refusing to comprehend that an API is not software. It's not executable code. It's not "source code" for software. An API is a set of specifications for allowing the access of data, an application, or service. It's a "method of operation," which is simply not subject to copyright law. Indeed, back in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled in Lotus v. Borland that a user interface to a computer program is not subject to copyright under Section 102(b) as the interface is a "method of operation."
Whew! At least the .h files in C/C++ would never be considered an API and are thus safe.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:05AM (3 children)
I believe for copyright, the term creative is used. Frequently, courts have found mere recording of facts not to be subject to copyright. A header file is very much mere facts (the type and position of parameters and the type of a return value.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 02 2019, @09:50AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:19PM (1 child)
It is worth noting that in the early '80s, it was not certain that copyright covered software at all. Ultimately, the courts decided it did. No doubt with reasoning involving angels dancing on pins and finely split frog's hairs.
However, in spite of CASE tools, code cannot really be auto-generated with any degree of success, headers can. Even done manually, it's not that uncommon to just copy the code to a .h and delete everything that doesn't look like a header.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 02 2019, @05:35PM
I would -1 you just for the trauma caused by you mentioning CASE tools, but in my happy place such abominations no longer exist, so I'll let you off.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves