Or not? Is there something about this ruling that will prevent me from making an open API? I’m not exactly a fan of Oracle, but the end of programming? Really?
One of the examples that has been used in these court documents is min(int x, int y). If that’s copyrightable (and apparently owned by Oracle), then good freaking luck.
Yes, that would suck, although my understanding is that Oracle is not asserting copyright on a line by line, parameter by parameter basis. If it were that simple, Google could point to preexisting implementations that predate Java entirely. “We didn’t copy Java; we copied BSD sys/param.h.”
IIRC the courts have allowed music publishers to enforce copyright on tiny, even sub-second, song clips sampled into other songs. It seems reasonable to worry that once there is a legal precedent to support API copyrights it will only be a matter of time before companies attempt to enforce copyright over small chunks of their APIs. Maybe not as general as min(int x, int y), but the claims wouldn’t need to be that general to cause massive damage to the industry.
I searched a bit before posting the comment, but there is just too much noise around the relevant search terms. I have heard of a specific example, it was an artist who sampled around a second of music from another artist and lost the ensuing legal battle. I did find some several references that indicate there is no legal length floor, but maybe the courts have established one or more tests that account for length.
Note that that while the defendant ultimately “won”, the restrictions on when you can sample are pretty strict and under a naive reading, application to APIs would be pretty damaging. Note also that the test the court established is extremely vague, which would also spell trouble for APIs.
In any event, I can’t back up the sub-second claim, but even if five seconds is actionable, that’s about 2.5% of a typical pop song, maybe less. If copying 2.5% of an API (perhaps accidentally) is legally enforceable, it seems reasonable to think we’re in for some absurd lawsuits down the road.
For the archives… This article turned up today. The sixth circuit did say even short samples are infringement per se, but the ninth circuit rejects that.
For me the problem with this approach is that their is rarely (in the UK at least) equality of access to legal counsel - the more money you can spend on your legal team, the greater your advantage seems to be.
Which is exemplified by the fact companies like Oracle, Apple and Google apparently spend more on lawyers fees than R&D
This may or may not be relevant, but I remember that a lot of Google’s M&A activity in the early 2010s was driven by patent count. The idea was that, because it was so unpredictable how these patents would play in court (since average people know very little about technology, and so many software patents are utterly bogus) it was often the number of patents (regardless of what was in them) that would be taken for one’s strength. Google, which had (admirably) focused on innovation rather than patent-trolling up to 2010 or so, was behind on patent numbers (relative to its competitors) and started acquiring companies for patents to bring itself into “mutually assured destruction” territory.
I wasn’t at Google for a long time and I wasn’t anyone important back then, but that’s how I remember it. Tech people are well aware of the general public’s ignorance when it comes to software and it always seemed to me that this was the sort of thing that tech executives wanted to avoid at all possible. It seems that Oracle feels differently, though.
Or not? Is there something about this ruling that will prevent me from making an open API? I’m not exactly a fan of Oracle, but the end of programming? Really?
One of the examples that has been used in these court documents is
min(int x, int y). If that’s copyrightable (and apparently owned by Oracle), then good freaking luck.Yes, that would suck, although my understanding is that Oracle is not asserting copyright on a line by line, parameter by parameter basis. If it were that simple, Google could point to preexisting implementations that predate Java entirely. “We didn’t copy Java; we copied BSD sys/param.h.”
IIRC the courts have allowed music publishers to enforce copyright on tiny, even sub-second, song clips sampled into other songs. It seems reasonable to worry that once there is a legal precedent to support API copyrights it will only be a matter of time before companies attempt to enforce copyright over small chunks of their APIs. Maybe not as general as
min(int x, int y), but the claims wouldn’t need to be that general to cause massive damage to the industry.I can’t find anything to support the claim that even sub-second sound clips are copyright. Longer samples, yes, but nothing that short.
With regards to text, the copyright office has explicitly stated that short phrases cannot be copyrighted.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ34.pdf
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/2003/09/09/copyright_protection_for_short/
I searched a bit before posting the comment, but there is just too much noise around the relevant search terms. I have heard of a specific example, it was an artist who sampled around a second of music from another artist and lost the ensuing legal battle. I did find some several references that indicate there is no legal length floor, but maybe the courts have established one or more tests that account for length.
Here’s a German case that deals with similar issues: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121220/19334921459/kraftwerks-12-year-lawsuit-over-2-second-sample-comes-to-bizarre-end.shtml
Note that that while the defendant ultimately “won”, the restrictions on when you can sample are pretty strict and under a naive reading, application to APIs would be pretty damaging. Note also that the test the court established is extremely vague, which would also spell trouble for APIs.
In any event, I can’t back up the sub-second claim, but even if five seconds is actionable, that’s about 2.5% of a typical pop song, maybe less. If copying 2.5% of an API (perhaps accidentally) is legally enforceable, it seems reasonable to think we’re in for some absurd lawsuits down the road.
For the archives… This article turned up today. The sixth circuit did say even short samples are infringement per se, but the ninth circuit rejects that.
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2016/06/de-minimis-music-sampling-isnt-infringement-salsoul-v-madonna.htm
For me the problem with this approach is that their is rarely (in the UK at least) equality of access to legal counsel - the more money you can spend on your legal team, the greater your advantage seems to be.
Which is exemplified by the fact companies like Oracle, Apple and Google apparently spend more on lawyers fees than R&D
This may or may not be relevant, but I remember that a lot of Google’s M&A activity in the early 2010s was driven by patent count. The idea was that, because it was so unpredictable how these patents would play in court (since average people know very little about technology, and so many software patents are utterly bogus) it was often the number of patents (regardless of what was in them) that would be taken for one’s strength. Google, which had (admirably) focused on innovation rather than patent-trolling up to 2010 or so, was behind on patent numbers (relative to its competitors) and started acquiring companies for patents to bring itself into “mutually assured destruction” territory.
I wasn’t at Google for a long time and I wasn’t anyone important back then, but that’s how I remember it. Tech people are well aware of the general public’s ignorance when it comes to software and it always seemed to me that this was the sort of thing that tech executives wanted to avoid at all possible. It seems that Oracle feels differently, though.
I had to look up what M&A meant. In case anyone else is wondering, it means buying other companies.
Murders and Æxecutions.
Also known as M&E because of the popularity of the modern (by which I mean correct) spelling of “execution”.
For the confused (like me), @michaelochurch is being facetious. It’s “Mergers & Acquisitions”.