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Effort for effort is eye for an eye fallacy.

The OP seems to make some mistakes of fact. The decision was not Alsup's, but the jury's finding of fact: Google's use is fair even if API's are copyrightable (Alsup believed they weren't).

For the quote you don't understand, I believe the mistake is only in a single character, 'is' should be 'in' (to which I present Larry Ellison as the central counter-example).

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Thanks, I corrected the typo.

As to the first round that occurred 4 years ago, the decision was Judge Alsup's. Here is my analysis of that decision at that time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4050490#up_4051761

Of course, in the verdict that just came down, the decision was that of the jury's and, yes, Google's use is fair even if API's are copyrightable - that is what fair use means.

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