Oracle Wins Android-Java Copyright Appeal

Whew! For a second there, I thought we weren't going to have a patent trial to follow. Hooray for more courtroom patent drama.

The most spectacular decision in the ongoing smartphone IP disputes has been handed down today by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: District Judge William Alsup has been overruled with respect to his erroneous determination that Oracle's Java API declaring code was not protected by copyright. Since the 2012 jury was hung with respect to "fair use", which means that neither party had prevailed on that defense, the case is now remanded to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California for a new trial on fair use and damages.

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That's a disturbing development, lets hope the next judge will be as tech-literate as the first, and less like this round.

Well fuck. (Sent from my android)

Wierdo said:

That's a disturbing development, lets hope the next judge will be as tech-literate as the first, and less like this round.

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On one level I'm not sure that's true in context of what is currently considered patentable,


On another level Android exists because of the work that went into creating Java. Java was picked because it was there, theoretically a good language, and programmers were relatively common. That effort has been kind of shafted. If Google has been kicking in some kind of reasonable compensation already that then doesn't matter, but if its been all take take take.

jpm100 said:

On one level I'm not sure that's true in context of what is currently considered patentable,


On another level Android exists because of the work that went into creating Java. Java was picked because it was there, theoretically a good language, and programmers were relatively common. That effort has been kind of shafted. If Google has been kicking in some kind of reasonable compensation already that then doesn't matter, but if its been all take take take.

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Patenting API would basically make software development almost impossible, you wouldn't be able to get anything useful done, it's like patenting mathematical formulas.

This article from 1989 comes to mind

Fortunately for all of us, juries and judges tend to be technologically illiterate

/sarcasm

Wierdo said:

Patenting API would basically make software development almost impossible, you wouldn't be able to get anything useful done, it's like patenting mathematical formulas.

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This is actually a copyright issue, not patent.

Wierdo said:

Patenting API would basically make software development almost impossible, you wouldn't be able to get anything useful done, it's like patenting mathematical formulas.

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This is copy write, not patent.

As in, you can make a function that takes two numbers and returns there results. You just better not call label it "double foo( double &a, double&b )" because that be copy write dawg.

Cali3350 said:

This is copy write, not patent.

As in, you can make a function that takes two numbers and returns there results. You just better not call label it "double foo( double &a, double&b )" because that be copy write dawg.

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My mistake. In that case I don't see where the copyright issue is that's Oracle's going after, the API is not claiming to be Java, just derived from it. Or am I misreading the claim here?

Damn! 1000 more billable hours at $600/hr. /said an Attorney, never

Wierdo said:

Patenting API would basically make software development almost impossible, you wouldn't be able to get anything useful done, it's like patenting mathematical formulas.

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If Sun charged per use of its API it would die and a API offering a free license would take its place. It might make a little money from the bate and switch before users found an alternative, but after that it would be a memory.

One of the issues at stake is the ability to have stewardship over a language like preventing the forking of the API. Microsoft, for better or worse, tried to fork Java with J#. Imho, Sun promoting original Java in response to J# diverted resources that should have gone to cleaning up their API's.

Not sure what is really going on here just concerned that because situation A can be cast to look like situation B, people reflexively give the same reaction. If this is Oracle looking for a piece of the pie and if Google wasn't tossing them a cookie, they shouldn't be surprised.