Possible reversal in Oracle v Google


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It's being reported that the ruling against Oracle that deemed source code from Java that was copied into Android as not protected by copyright law might be reversed by an appellate court.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/04/us-oracle-google-appeal-idUSBRE9B30UT20131204

 

 

We might end seeing this one go back to another trial.

 

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Good. The ruling never "felt" right. I don't like the idea that someone can copyright an API, but Google basically made a carbon copy of everything.. It's like if someone copied a painting vs copying a few brush strokes. One is plagiarism, the other is fair use. This sort of allowance already exists in music, I don't see why it can't be applied to APIs too.

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I think that was the main sticking point one of the judges asked Google's main council, who did admit they are not allowed to copy their competitor's API's.

 

What I am really curious to see is if Oracle wins, and forces Google to make Android Java compliant (their chief sticking point outside of the other complaints), then how that will effect the apps. Such as platforms that support Java natively (Windows 8 for example), whether those apps will then also work on those platforms.

 

I think that presents a rather intriguing scenario. It sure would make the "app-gap" rather irrelevant, which in my book would be great for consumers.

 

Good. The ruling never "felt" right. I don't like the idea that someone can copyright an API, but Google basically made a carbon copy of everything.. It's like if someone copied a painting vs copying a few brush strokes. One is plagiarism, the other is fair use. This sort of allowance already exists in music, I don't see why it can't be applied to APIs too.

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What I am really curious to see is if Oracle wins, and forces Google to make Android Java compliant (their chief sticking point outside of the other complaints), then how that will effect the apps. Such as platforms that support Java natively (Windows 8 for example), whether those apps will then also work on those platforms.

I think that presents a rather intriguing scenario. It sure would make the "app-gap" rather irrelevant, which in my book would be great for consumers.

Java compliant or not, Dalvik is open source. There's nothing stopping anyone from implementing it on any platform (eg. see Sailfish).

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Java compliant or not, Dalvik is open source. There's nothing stopping anyone from implementing it on any platform (eg. see Sailfish).

and there would be nothing stopping oracle from going after them (if they win the ruling) .

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and there would be nothing stopping oracle from going after them (if they win the ruling) .

True, but consumers would win the same no matter who wins this case.

At least regarding that "app-gap", because according the EFF everyone would lose big time if APIs are ruled to be copyrightable.

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why would copyrightable API's make everyone lose ? why should another company be able to rip of someone else API instead of making their own ? it's just an API. if you want something established, just use one of the already open ones or license one. 

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why would copyrightable API's make everyone lose ? why should another company be able to rip of someone else API instead of making their own ? it's just an API. if you want something established, just use one of the already open ones or license one.

http://m.cnet.com/news/oracle-appeal-in-google-api-copyright-suit-hit-with-criticism/57586990?ds=1

I don't really have an opinion on that but other than Oracle in this specific case, the concept of copyrightable APIs seems to be despised by pretty much everyone in the tech industry.

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why would copyrightable API's make everyone lose ? why should another company be able to rip of someone else API instead of making their own ? it's just an API. if you want something established, just use one of the already open ones or license one.

Like Harmony?

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Can some one TL;DR or ELI5 the entire argument?

In short,

 

Google used Java source code and copied few of the modules and made their own JVM (Dalvik).

Now Oracle claims that, this is equal to copyright infringement since Java is developed under collaboration of many companies as an open source.

 

You can use/distribute Java like you want keeping the original license and information as it's, but what Google did is they made another fork of it and named "Dalvik" and as if they invented Java. This ###### off Oracle and filed lawsuit against Google.

 

If Google loses, well good enough (I want it to), they gonna face serious damages in whole Android system.

If Oracle loses, nothing much, eventually everyone start forking any open source and modify with few changes and show it to world as if they developed from scratch.

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In short,

Google used Java source code and copied few of the modules and made their own JVM (Dalvik).

Now Oracle claims that, this is equal to copyright infringement since Java is developed under collaboration of many companies as an open source.

You can use/distribute Java like you want keeping the original license and information as it's, but what Google did is they made another fork of it and named "Dalvik" and as if they invented Java. This ****ed off Oracle and filed lawsuit against Google.

If Google had done that it would be a clear case of copyright infringement and they would have lost the case quickly.

The issue with copyright in this trial is that it's not about copying code (ie. an outright fork) but about APIs.

To put things in perspective, if APIs are finally ruled subject to copyright then Microsoft could sue Wine for it's reimplementation of the Windows libraries, as they are a clear room implementation (the code is completely different from that of Microsoft) but they obviously need to use the same APIs so Windows apps are able to call the Wine libraries' functions and work transparently.

It seems to me that applying copyrights to APIs would be hugely detrimental for the software industry, although on the other hand being an original piece of work the author has (as with any other work) the right to claim rights on it.

Both choices (copyright and no copyrights on APIs) have their tradeoffs.

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Remember that the name "Java" applies to multiple things, the only thing Google claims they use is the language, they explicitly say they don't implement the Java API (They only use a small subset of it from Harmony, and that's for stuff like string manipulation, everything that makes up "Android" is written by Google)

Dalvik isn't a JVM either, it's a compiler that understands the Java syntax, but that's it, nothing else is similar.

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So whom do you think should win this ######?

Well Google already lost on the actual code claims (The rangeCheck function, which Oracle claimed was super important, but everybody else realised it wasn't, and the unit tests), what they're fighting over now is whether or not you can copyright an API, which I think is a terrible idea and shouldn't happen.

A copyrighted API isn't covering the code itself (That already can be copyrighted), what we're talking about then is copyrighting how the code is invoked.

Edit: If I have a REST API for a web service, does that mean I can copyright certain URLs? etc.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Edit: If I have a REST API for a web service, does that mean I can copyright certain URLs? etc.

But the thing is, if you have a website, the content of the URL is already copyrighted. So functionally, there's no difference between a REST API and a URL. 

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