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Comment by jagged-chisel | Hacker News Reader

I think the insinuation is that in order to run iOS apps, one would necessarily need to infringe on Apple's copyrights.

But that's not necessary. There is open source code at the base of macOS and iOS, and it's only that being used currently. Even to go further and create a full clone of iOS would be fine, if (and only if) a "clean room" implementation were made.

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There is recent precedent that APIs are copyrightable.

But that doesn't indicate automatic infringement if used. The current decision in Oracle vs. Google says Google's implementation of Oracle's copyrighted Java APIs is fair use. Oracle is appealing, so maybe that will change, but the point is "copyrightable" still comes with "fair use."

As I understand it, it's not a binding precedent yet. The Federal Circuit ruled in Oracle's favor on that question and the Supreme Court denied certiorari, but the Federal Circuit wasn't really supposed to be hearing a copyright question to begin with. They're the appeals court for patents, and on other issues tied up in a patent case they are only supposed to follow local circuit precedent (Ninth Circuit, in this case). So until the Supreme Court grants certiorari on this case or another case with the same question comes before a local circuit, there can't be any binding precedent on this matter that would apply to new cases outside Oracle v Google.

>the Supreme Court denied certiorari

They denied the original appeal over copyrightable APIs. There was a second trial over Google's fair use argument and the jury ruled for Google. Oracle appealed and the Federal Circuit ruled against Google again. That decision was appealed to SCOTUS on January 24, 2019. Google's petition challenged both decisions by the Federal Circuit: APIs are copyrightable and Google's use of the Java API wasn't fair use. Certiorari was granted November 15, 2019 and arguments were planned for October 7, 2020.

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