On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:37 AM, <gottl...@nyu.edu> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 30 2015, James wrote: > >> I think I just heard a news report that Google lost a long term >> legal/financial battle with Oracle over java. It seems now that google >> (android and any thing that uses java) is going to have to pay >> Oracle some 'pal_a_monies' ? Or did I here that wrong? >> >> If so, I'm sure google and lots of folks are scrambling to replace >> java.....? > > Yes the supreme court refused to hear google's appeal to the Federal > Circuit's decision (this despite my being a signatory to an amicus brief > asking them to hear the appeal :-) ). > > I believe "The lawsuit will now return to the trial court to decide > Google’s fair use defense to Oracle’s API copyright claim." > > A sad day,
Yup, I forget the details of the original decisions but if I were SCO I'd be looking for opportunities to appeal since all those DEFINEs in the linux headers are now copyrightable APIs. Likewise, better check your licenses - if you're writing in C without permission of the original authors they might have a claim against you, though as the supreme court points out you can always spend $200k on lawyers to argue fair use. That said, I'm not sure to what extent this ruling affects Google moving forward, with their move to ART. They will still have to fight over past damages, of course, but they should be OK. And, if Samsung/Amazon ever gives Google too much trouble I guess Google can always sue them over using ART now. So much for standards. Oh, and I wonder what this means for video codecs whose patents have expired, but for which copyrights on the original designs still have centuries ahead of them (most likely)? However, if this is the decision that ultimately causes everybody to stop using FAT32, perhaps it won't be an entirely sad day. -- Rich
