Google v Oracle -- appeal may interest LV programmers

[Aristos Queue]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/googles-copyright-win-against-oracle-is-in-danger-on-appeal/

 

The trial judge ruled that APIs cannot be protected by copyright, only the implementation of those APIs. This is a critical ruling for most of the software industry. If this ruling gets reversed, it becomes much MUCH harder to do multi-platform development because you cannot re-implement a working system on another platform -- you'd have to invent a new wrapper API that looked substantively different from the underlying platform API, and only use your wrapper API on the other platforms. The substantial difference generally means some significant performance loss, even on the main platform, meaning that it would significantly deter apps from being cross-platform on any platforms.

 

This ruling is now being appealed and the new judges aren't initially showing the same technical savvy as the trial judge. I have no idea what kinds of friend-of-the-court briefs are allowed at the appeals court level, but if any of you have legal departments that get involved in software cases, this one is a big deal to all software development.

[ShaunR]

Interesting.
Wouldn't work in the UK as software is considered the same a literary work. So the analogy would be like writing a book or chapters with the same title (but titles, slogans and phrases are un-copyrightable in UK law - this seems to be how the judge in this case sees it).

Of course, they could trademark all the function names Then everyone would be stuffed.

Edited December 5, 2013 by ShaunR

[mje]

While there have been some positive moves in recent history by the courts and various federal agencies in the USA regarding technology, I think they are more the exception than the norm. I am not optimistic on the future of technology policy [in the USA].