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posted by martyb on Monday April 05 2021, @06:48PM   Printer-friendly

We had two Soylentils write in with this breaking news. See other reports at Ars Technica, BBC, and c|net.

Supreme Court rules in Google's favor in copyright dispute with Oracle

Supreme Court rules in Google's favor in copyright dispute with Oracle over Android software:

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with Google against Oracle in a long-running copyright dispute over the software used in Android, the mobile operating system.

The court's decision was 6-2. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not yet confirmed by the Senate when the case was argued in October, did not participate in the case.

The case concerned about 12,000 lines of code that Google used to build Android that were copied from the Java application programming interface developed by Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired in 2010. It was seen as a landmark dispute over what types of computer code are protected under American copyright law.

Oracle had claimed at points to be owed as much as $9 billion, while Google claimed that its use of the code was covered under the doctrine of fair use and therefore not subject to copyright liability. Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

See also:
Supreme Court hands Google a victory in a multibillion-dollar case against Oracle

In addition to resolving a multibillion-dollar dispute between the tech titans, the ruling helps affirm a longstanding practice in software development. But the Court declined to weigh in on the broader question of whether APIs are copyrightable.

Justices wary of upending tech industry in Google v. Oracle Supreme Court fight

Several of the other justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, suggested they were sympathetic to Oracle's copyright claims.

Still, they appeared reluctant to rule in Oracle's favor because of arguments made by leading computer scientists and Microsoft, in friend-of-the-court briefs, that doing so could upend the industry.

GOOGLE LLC v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf

Held: Google's copying of the Java SE API, which included only those lines of code that were needed to allow programmers to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative program, was a fair use of that material as a matter of law. Pp. 11–36.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

 
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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday April 05 2021, @08:02PM (3 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 05 2021, @08:02PM (#1133600) Journal

    SOME APIs are design decisions. Others are just recognition of common practice.
    E.g., consider the common example of sine, implementing that as:
    float sin (float val)
    is only creative to the extent of whether you are passing the argument in radians, degrees, mils, or something else. I guess float vs. double would be another plausible "creative" decision, but I think it's primarily functional. Returning an integer or a string would be just silly, and requiring the argument to be an integer or a string would be stupidly clumsy.

    OTOH, it's a valid argument that the APIS aren't design decisions, they are only records of design decisions. The actual design decisions are the implementations. I'm not sure I totally buy that, however, considering the nature of "interface" elements.

    Really, I pretty much agree with the argument that current law doesn't properly deal with technical documentation. That said, I definitely prefer my software to be GPL.

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    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 06 2021, @01:58PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 06 2021, @01:58PM (#1133868) Journal

    EVEN IF, even if an API is a design decision, and is an expression of creativity, it should not be a copyright infringement to copy that API to create a work-alike or compatible implementation.

    A compatible implementation of anything, by definition, must conform to all externally visible interfaces.

    A car radio replacement, must be able to fit the same bracket, and connect to the same connectors to be a drop-in replacement. An in-cabinet dishwasher must have the same hook-ups as the one it replaces.

    This is a well understood principle.

    SCOTUS did not decide whether APIs could be copyright protected, but assuming for the moment that they can be, Google's use of the API was not a copyright infringement. This alone establishes a precedent. Google's purpose was to use a work-alike implementation.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @06:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 06 2021, @06:12PM (#1133950)

    Your example disproves your argument. As it happens, sin was one of the APIs at issue in this case.
    But it was not:

    float sin (float val)

    It was:

    package java.lang;
    public class Math {
      public static double sin(double a){
      }
    }

    The assignment of APIs to packages and classes was the creative element, and it was present in every single API, obviously.