Joel Hruska
The Supreme Court declined today to hear Google’s appeal in
its long-running spat with Oracle over Java APIs and copyright, in a
move that could have significant ramifications for the entire software
industry. When the case went to trial several years ago,
Google won an initially favorable verdict, which ruled that APIs
couldn’t be copyrighted because they were held to be functional elements
of code rather than expressive statements of individual creativity or
particular intent. The original case covered Google’s use of names,
declarations, and header lines in the Java APIs, which Oracle declared
constituted a breach of its copyright. Certain purely functional
elements of organization, like using alphabetical order to create a
dictionary or phone book, can’t be copyrighted, which is why the case
was so important: Do the headers and structure of an API constitute a
creative element, or are they purely a functional method of
organization?
Some
of the original jury questions. The first case found Google had not
infringed and that APIs couldn’t be copyrighted, but was overturned
The ability to clone APIs to promote interoperability is
generally thought to be extremely important for software ecosystems,
which is why computer scientists had generally argued in favor of
Google’s position. When the United States DOJ weighed in at the Supreme
Court’s request earlier this year, however, it told the justices that it
believed APIs should be protected by copyright. With the Supreme Court
having declined to hear the case, it’ll head back to a lower district
court for a ruling on whether or not Google’s use of the APIs
constitutes fair use. Oracle is apparently seeking a $1 billion
judgement against the company in the event that it is held to be
infringing.
The fair use dilemma
In theory the courts could still decide in favor of Google,
but fair use isn’t much of a standard to hang billions of dollars in
revenue on. Copyright cases are typically decided on a case-by-case
basis. Even if Google’s use of Java in this instance is ruled fair-use,
there’s no guarantee that another case would be ruled in similar
fashion. A broad declaration that APIs can’t be copyrighted, in
contrast, provides additional protection for users and programmers.
How the district court rules, in this case, will be critical
for establishing how much fair use wiggle room will exist in the
future. The court will evaluate exactly what Google did (or failed to
do) and hopefully give guidance on exactly how programmers in the future
can look to the case in establishing whether or not their own API use
infringes or not. Google has already begun pushing a replacement for its
Java implementation (Dalvik), called ART, but would be on the hook for
infringements on past devices and older iterations of Android.
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