This isn't just a disaster for Google. This is a disaster for competition in the tech industry and a disaster for consumers. If APIs can be copyrighted, what's next? File formats? On-the-wire protocols?
Apple wouldn't have to just use hard-to-find screwdrivers, they could just make a new screw shape, copyright the design, and then it'll be even harder to open their gadgets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Robertson
Not that expiring in a decade or two would help in the area of tech where stuff moves so fast.
Originally, Oracle sued for both patent infringement and copyright infringement. When they appealed, the appeal went to the Federal Circuit because of the patent issues, and so the Federal Circuit ended up handling the appeal of both the patent issues and the copyright issues.
If the case been just a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit.
If it had taken that route, the 9th Circuit would have almost certainly upheld Judge Alsop, and the Supreme Court almost certainly would not have taken an appeal from that.
The Federal Circuit is suppose to apply the precedent of the circuit that the case came from when deciding issues like the copyright issues that are only before the Federal Circuit because they tagged along on a patent case. In this case, that means they were suppose to follow the 9th Circuit precedent.
I think we need to change the way the Federal Circuit works in cases like this. If they decide issues that got there via tag along, I think the appeals path for those issues should be to the circuit whose precedent they are suppose to be following. In this case, that would mean that the copyright issues should go to the 9th Circuit after the Federal Circuit.
The current way can lead to a situation where in a given circuit you can effectively have different laws for X depending on whether or not someone sues you just over X, or over X and patents.
If sued over just X, the law on X is what the circuit court of appeals for your circuit says. If sued over X and patents, the law on X is whatever the Federal Circuit thinks it is. Those can diverge, and then you have the situation that plaintiffs can choose what they want--sue just for X to get their circuit's law, or toss in a throwaway patent claim to get the Federal Circuit's law.
Sure it would.
Unless they decided not to take it; it was coming to them one way or another. It's not like either side was going to take a loss lying down.
But the Seventh Amendment issue probably wouldn't be in it if the patent issues hadn't had it going through the CAFC rather than the 9th Cir.
The world is going to be fine.
How? For that to be true, there would have to be binding precedent applicable outside this case. But Federal Circuit decisions on legal questions—for instance copyright—outside their special subjects (patent claims is what got this case before them) do not create binding precedent for any lower court.
Had this not gone through the Federal Circuit, and had it been the Ninth Circuit (which otherwise would have been the court to hear the appeal) that had ruled, sure, you could then say “Hey, look, there's not some apocalypse due to this ruling happening in the Ninth Circuit, so it must not be a real problem”. But the Federal Circuit decision, notionally applying Ninth Circuit law, has no binding effect on any other court in any other case, so of course it hasn't caused an apocalypse. Precisely because no other court, trial or appellate, has ever held APIs to be copyrightable.
There was nothing stopping anyone from capitalizing on that ruling and moving forward with bring this "disaster"
This was brought up during the oral arguments and Google did not have a great answer.