jan.wildeboer.net
Edit: The page appears to be down, so I've posted the full text on pastebin - http://pastebin.com/6G5vqLj5
For example it would make it harder for someone to offer a drop in replacement for your cloud based service by replicating your APIs exactly.
Personally I doubt APIs could be copyrighted, but some would find an advantage if they could.
At least with patents you can do some reasonable due-diligence (e.g. when building an audio codec, check for audio processing patents). You're not in the clear just by doing so (obviously, look at all the lawsuits) but it's at least some protection. API copyrights could end up being much more deadly IP landmines.
1: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/10515817552/uk-cou...
Copyright, at least in the UK, has for a long time granted protection for copies which are not necessarily identical, but similar where they are a substantial reproduction of the original.
Admittedly in the case above the line between protecting an idea and the expression was pushed towards the idea, however, as stated, the specific facts of the case (in the sense that it was a blatant attempt to mimic but not infringe the original) made it more likely that the judge would find infringement.
How much experience do you have of passing off cases versus simple copyright infringement? Because to me this looks like a bad decision, as whatever the intent the same image was not used, just one that was similar in content and execution.
And it certainly looks like misrepresentation to divert custom.
There was clearly no passing off here in the way you tend to frame a passing off action as per Warnink (in the UK at least). What misrepresentation are you referring to?
The defendant was a tea company looking to use an image, the claimant was a gift company so it wasn't a case of a customer going to the tea company when they meant to go to the gift company. This is the misrepresentation which generally has to be in place for a passing off action to be successful.
Copyright infringement does not just cover identical images but substantial reproductions. The correct question is whether the copy was a substantial reproduction or whether it simply borrowed elements from the original, that is to say whether the line between inspiration and copying had been crossed.
\edit I would also add that in general passing off actions are far harder to prove than copyright infringement. To my mind, if a copyright infringement action is available this would always be preferable to bringing a passing off action.
I may have over- and misstated the problem as it exists at the moment. I am still concerned that the Oracle case will push us toward copyright applying to an idea rather than an expression, as discussed elsewhere in the thread.
I am bothered by the fact that an API, by its nature, to some extent, is just an idea. You call some function with parameters of certain types in a certain order and you get back some piece of information computed in a particular way from the parameters.
So the function prototypes themselves (the "API") are really just descriptions of an idea the way "a red bus driving across London bridge" is a description of an idea for a photograph. They are more terse, non-English (or whatever) descriptions, but descriptions nonetheless.
In this case it would be quite a bit easier to accidentally infringe a copyright because copyright would end up intersecting with patents.
For example, a photo sharing service might have an API endpoint called "photo" that accepts some image and meta data through a POST request. You are starting a competing service. You are aware that their API is copyrighted so you call your endpoint "picture". But the problem now is that you've done the same thing the photographer did with the picture of the bus in London, you've intentionally wiggled around a copyright to do something very similar.
Could you be sued? Maybe, seems that you could be if you happen to be in England, but I'm not a lawyer. The problem is that this makes a lawsuit seem much more likely to me than if the API itself weren't covered by copyright at all.
And we definitely don't need more IP lawsuits.
most important bit:
Consequently, the answer to Questions 1 to 5 is that Article 1(2) of Directive 91/250 must be interpreted as meaning that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression of that program and, as such, are not protected by copyright in computer programs for the purposes of that directive.
I wonder what the EU courts would have to say about an encrypted file format...
More often than not, the country could pass a law that complies with the directive in question, then "forget" to enforce it as soon as the original process is terminated in a satisfactory way; individuals would then appeal to the ECJ again and the process would be repeated, this time resulting almost certainly in fines. And so on ad infinitum, or (usually) until the political winds change at the national level.
In almost every case, EU laws and directives take precedence over national law, but the mechanisms to enforce this primacy are still somewhat vague and weak. This is by design: if they had been too clearly stated, most countries would not have signed the treaties. The "plan" was to state the overall principles, then find a way to enact them further down the line. It's a very pragmatic approach, and it's producing results in many areas, but clearly it's not something that, today, will satisfy all individuals in their lifetimes.
OTOH this is a tested way to get stuff in laws that are hard to find national support for. Make it an EU directive and explain to your people that "Sorry, but even if we don't like it, we must implement this now." - see EU data retention directive etc.
The law allowing reverse engineering of APIs and interconnects is well established in the US and Europe and has been for decades. In the US it goes back to Amdhal making plug compatible peripherals for IBMs and the right to reverse engineer is enshrined in an EU directive.
That's why the Oracle case isn't about copyright. They claim to have patents on various concepts of the language. So you are perfectly at liberty to implement a 'while' command with the same function template - you just aren't allowed to use it to do a loop !