Java jury finds Google guilty of infringement: Now what? No judge has tried harder than Judge Alsup, presiding over the Oracle-versus-Google case, to persuade two warring parties not to go to court. But he hadn't counted for the egos of the two billionaire Larrys. The jury seems to affirm Alsup's instincts were correct. At the weekend, after five days of deliberating, the panel …
This is from filed briefs and orders not reports:
The judge instructed the jury to work on the *assumption* that the APIs were copyrightable and asked the jury if Google had copied them. The jury said Yes - because Google had never denied they had copied them.
However, it is the judge himself that will later decide if they actually are copyrightable as a matter of law.
But even if he did find they were copyrightable, the jury has not yet rendered a verdict on whether that copying was "de minimis" or inconsequential.
The only other thing they found Google had copied was 9 lines of code out of millions. When Oracles lawyer mentioned damages for those 9 lines the judge's answer was that that was "bordering on the ridiculous".
Plus Oracle's own expert witness on damages assigned zero value to those lines and in any case they were removed from the product long ago.
So thus far, from what has been decided to this point, Google are liable to pay Oracle precisely zero dollars and zero cents.
Hence the judge's comment about no finding of liability (yet).
Google (along with everyone else in computing and any even vaguely related field who isn't Oracle) contend that APIs are not subject to copyright. The judge will decide if they are, but before doing so he instructed the jury to assume that they are, and then decide if they were copied. Since Google didn't deny their API was the same this wasn't a difficult finding.
HOWEVER the jury did NOT find Google "guilty" of infringing the copyright, Google claim fair use and absent a finding from the jury on that issue there isn't any finding of copyright infringment, just of copying. The headline as written is akin to calling a policeman guilty of murder if he shoots a gunman who is aiming a gun at his head, the court would very likely decide the action was justifiable even if the judge first asks the jury to decide if the policeman did in fact pull the trigger.
As a developer I'd certainly like to be able to copyright my API's - should I choose to do so.
But only in the context of a product or system. Outside of that context clearly the copyright would not apply because most languages use commonly used terms and names.
So if I develop the Acme language, I should be able to copyright the API's in the Acme context. That might mean if you want to create an implementation of an Acme virtual machine, then you do so under the conditions I stipulate to ensure standardisation.
If I open source my API's then provided you use the license I provide you can go ahead and create an Acme virtual machine.
That's what Sun did. The alternative is chaos. And in the US I understand there is already case law that says API's are copyrightable (though not necessarily copyrighted).
Really? I mean, really?
Every time you write an API (and a single externally callable function call could be an API...) you will need to do a copyright scan so that some numb-nut won't whack you with a copyright infringement. Of course, if you write your own language and license it accordingly, go for it. I am sure it will be popular. But that means the same API in a different language will be OK - unless you want cross-language copyrights as *well*.
Remember, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander - any API *you* write will be subject to the same copyright infringement rules enforced by somebody else.
And really, "The alternative is chaos."? APIs have been written for the past what 60 years and the only chaos I see is folks running around with their hair on fire shouting "there will be chaos if APIs cannot be copyrighted".
"And really, "The alternative is chaos."? APIs have been written for the past what 60 years and the only chaos I see is folks running around with their hair on fire shouting "there will be chaos if APIs cannot be copyrighted".
The point was there would be chaos in the narrow context of Java if you can take an API and do whatever you want with it. My understanding is that Google don't even claim that the Android Dalvik VM is compatible with the Oracle JVM (though that may be for legal reasons).
Dalvik is effectively another realisation of Java syntax ulitmately generating Dalvik bytecode, and if Google wins this case prehaps we may see more variations, thereby losing standardisation of anything but the basic syntax. And next we'll see extensions to the language not available across all implementations etc. Ergo. Chaos.
There's an interesting link here for more background on how Google got around Suns licensing restrictions. It was legal, probably, but was it really good for Java?
http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/
I doubt anything good is going to come of this trial whoever wins. Google wins, it's open season on Java (and is Dalvik open sourced?) and makes the already fragmented language less attractive for enterprise (is there a Dalvik implementation for Windows?). Oracle wins, who is going to license at $15 per device.
A minor factual correction.
The jury did find that Android did include copied code. Nine lines. Out of 15 million.
There were other claims, such as the similarity of simple comments describing functions. Pretty much "Takes X and returns an integer Y". There are many ways to word this idea, but only a few simple ways, thus the comments look similar. The jury agreed with Google that this was not evidence of literal copying.
The 9 lines of code aren't worth "up to $150,000" as a copyright violation. That's only if there was knowing, willful infringement. Google removed those lines as soon as it was pointed out to them. Given that Sun's copyright registration was flawed, the statutory damages would typically be $200.
In a different setting there would be a defense stated that the usual threshold for infringement starts somewhere at 12 to 20 non-trivial lines of code. But the time to say even a single sentence in this trial is costing far more than $200 in legal fees. Boise reportedly got one sentence into trying to make it an issue before the court, perhaps trying to claim a partial win. The judge made it clear that Oracle had completely lost and wasn't going to get an accounting for 9 lines out of 15 million.
Whatever the merits of this current case, Google's approach to Android is undeniably haphazard.
* They didn't set up a decent update mechanism.
* They've gone and needlessly lumbered themselves with a court case over Java; they could have bought Sun themselves and avoided this issue altogether.
* It's generally regarded as the least secure of the smartphone platforms out there.
*The Android ecosystem is pretty fragmented, making everyone's life hard.
All this smacks of a lack of commitment on Google's part to get Android right and make a decent commercial future out of it. Now we learn in this court case that it's costing them a bundle of money anyway, with a less than certain net return on the investment.
Makes one wonder what their game plan actually is...
It's a real shame. I'd love there to be a consistent, well developed, well supported and completely open source mobile OS that anyone could use trouble free. I don't think that Android is really it. I don't think that the handset manufacturers want that - it would definitely cost them sales. Maybe that's why Android is the way it is, otherwise it wouldn't have got manufacturer support.
Small thought - how publically available is MS's hardware spec for Windows phones? We know that they mandate a standard spec on the manufacturers. If that were officially obtainable then it would be possible to brew a Linux distribution for it (in the same way that you can for a PC). Even if it weren't publically available, it could be reverse engineered (legitimately?), but that would be a lot of work.
It seems to me that back when Java was first being born, one of the biggest things that made it easy to adopt was how compatible with C and C++ it was. The first Java book I used just said "the operator precedence is exactly the same as C except for ..." and then had a short note about the differences. I had to dig out my C book more than once to get Java for exactly that reason.
If Oracle wins, does the C working group have a legitimate claim against Java on the exact same grounds that Oracle is using here?
Next they'll be saying you can copyright human languages, normal human gestures/behaviours/protocol (our interface), and all DNA. This is bleeding absurd, the whole IP idea is a complete load of anti-capitalist, self-defeating, stagnant bollocks; this corporatism must end!
If Google not willfully violated Java and it's APIs the IT industry would have been not under the massive threat it is under now. By willfully flaunting doing any of the right things by Sun and now Oracle, Google has forced a review of what was acceptable and now has put a burdonsome onerous on the entire IT industry worldwide.
I blame Google squarely as the main antagonist and indirectly blame every single Android owner indirectly for supporting this irresponsible monster of a company in forcing this to happen to the entire IT industry!!!
I think the OP means "Schrodinger's box".
Although IIRC the box contains a cat.
Which may or may no be dead.
Incidentally, when trying to explain quantum mechanics to my 8 year old son (hey, it was dark and raining outside so footy was out of the question) he looked at me and said:
"Daddy, can't you just listen and see if the cat makes a noise?"
out of the mouths of babes eh.
But I digress.
I am a C/C++ programmer.
Assume APIs are copyrightable.
I am writing an application in C/C++ and I use a 3rd party's binary and C/C++ header file which has some function and class definitions that do not include function bodies. This header file is copyrighted, it says so at the top. If I copy this file am I infringing the copyright? Is the API copyright a separate copyright? Does the copyright include class definitions? Can I create another header file for my own function body code that has the same function signatures as the 3rd party's one? Can I use them in private unseen code files?
In C/C++ the signature of a function does not include the return type, so what then?
So what is meant by a function signature?
Is
long foo( long val)
the same as
Public Function foo( Long val) As Long
for if API's are copyrightable? Admittedly you will not see the latter in a C/C header file - I hope.
What about all the language libraries all ready out there? Are the copyrighted?
The C++ standard specifies APIs - are they copyrighted? The implementations are under the current system - look at the includes for Microsoft's VS C/C++.
A coder sits down to write code to fullfil someone's requirement, how the hell does the poor soul know they're infringing a copyrighted API?
I give up!
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