I was trying to avoid a full dissertation into the family tree of Unix -- since 4.3BSD came out in the mid-80s, I think that the point stands that it is possible to legally reproduce a clone of complex software and APIs.

What the chief architect did or didn't do isn't relevant to the testimony of Jonathan Schwartz or rebuttal by McNealy.

Schwartz's testimony basically said that Sun was most concerned about protecting the Java trademarks and wider ecosystem, and while he wasn't necessarily happy with what Google did, he didn't see it as actionable. (Perhaps he thought that Google & Sun would eventually reconcile?)