Right, Walt. Their claims fly in the face of precedent as I understand it. They are trying to claim than any implementation of Java is a derivative work (see earlier posts in this thread) of the Java specifications. I predict -- and hope -- they lose.
Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Walt Farrell Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2012 6:05 AM To: IBM-MAIN@bama.ua.edu Subject: Re: Programming languages can't have copyright protection, EU court rules On Wed, 2 May 2012 10:49:18 -0700, Charles Mills <charl...@mcn.org> wrote: >> Can one replicate the 'look and feel' without copyright issues in the >> EU >now? > >I might add that "look and feel" might be subject to copyright protection. >Copyright, again, protects *expression.* > >If I wrote a z/OS system monitor that cleverly displayed the status of >started tasks as bouncing balls of various sizes and colors, that >expression might be subject to copyright, but the function of >displaying the status of started tasks graphically would not. > And, if I understand the Oracle claims in the US lawsuit, Oracle says that they -can- copyright the library specifications and implementation (API) because (I think) it's a kind of "look and feel" aspect of their Java implementation, even if they can't copyright the Java language itself. But that seems to go directly against the EU decision we're talking about here, since the SAS case seems to revolve around duplication of library APIs, too, if I understand it correctly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
