The actual ruling document <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf> should be quite readable by most participants here; I recommend a look. It actually reads more like tech speak then legelase, and appears to do a thorough job of laying the foundation for the decision. It indeed goes back to the history and Sun's intentions before the Oracle purchase.
The really good news goes beyond the specifics of the case, as most Supreme Court rulings do. It provides a conclusive ruling, unlikely to be challenged again in our lifetimes, that APIs as a category of software cannot be protected as intellectual property. While Google was acknowledged to have copied Sun/Oracle's API code, such copying was confirmed to fall under "fair use" exceptions to copyright infringement. Different variations of fair use allow for legal (ie, "infringing" but exempt from action) copying of works for the purpose of satire, education, home backups etc. (This case, before the ruling, took up one of the weekly lecture sessions of the Harvard CopyrightX course <https://online-learning.harvard.edu/course/copyrightx> I am currently taking. In a straw poll of the class a few weeks ago I was one of the few who argued that and why Google should prevail. Much of the rest of the class sided with Oracle. The next session will be fun.) Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada @evanleibovitch / @el56 On Tue, 6 Apr 2021 at 12:32, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: > Oracle sued Google, claiming Android infringed Oracle's patents on Java. > Somehow. That failed. > > So they sued for copyright infringement based on the copying of the API > declarations. > > The computer community had been very scared that APIs could be > copyrighted, something nobody had expected. > > The US Supreme Court decided that this particular case came under "fair > use". and was no infringement. This was NOT a general decision about > APIs. > > This is very good news of Free Software. And consumers. > > > https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210405/09243546552/supreme-court-sides-with-google-decade-long-fight-over-api-copyright-googles-copying-java-api-is-fair-use.shtml > --- > Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org > Unsubscribe from this mailing list > https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk >
--- Post to this mailing list talk@gtalug.org Unsubscribe from this mailing list https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
