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Comment by Signez | Hacker News Reader

Will we have to wait for a regulation body to come and force it open as soon as it becomes the de facto standard of home communication?

I won't make a bet on which one, because I don't want to nag, but we all know which one it will be.

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Well, Google lost against Oracle too, so it appears a mere API specification can be closed down arbitrarily; than is the world we live in. Unless the US gets a lot more tech literate and open minded judges and officials, I doubt that will change for the better. And, looking at their presidential candidates… well.

I thought Google mostly won against Oracle and the court decided just APIs aren't copyrightable...

The court decided the opposite--that APIs are copyrightable. However, the Supreme Court ruled that Google's usage was fair use, so I would agree that Google mostly won. The Supreme Court didn't consider whether APIs are copyrightable (the lower court ruled that) because Google would win regardless because it was fair use.

So I'm not sure it matters much whether APIs are copyrightable when what Google did was ruled fair use. I'd prefer if the courts ruled APIs weren't copyrightable, but I think it was still a good result because doing what Google did probably covers about any use case anyway.

I wonder if making a device which uses Threads could be considered fair use in the same way, because implementing threads is required for interoperability with many devices.

The Federal Court took up the appeal from Alsup case, accepted Oracles arguments that copying headers & using then same variable makes made the Java reimplementation a copyright violation (incompetent losers), sent the question of fair use back to a jury trial, the jury decided yeah it was fair use, the Federal Court ignored the jury and decided to ignore everyone hollering at them that they were being idiots & ruled for Oracle anyways.

Then the Supreme Court ignored the copyrightability aspects & ruled for a Google on some fair use grounds.

I've skimmed the write up from the ever excellent always recommendable Mark Lemley, Interfaces and Interoperability After Google v. Oracle, and really hope I can go a bit deeper into the history & trial at some point. Section 2 The Long Saga of Google v. Oracle starts on page 27 of the inner pdf. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3898154

It's been incredibly disappointing watching courts like the Federal Circuit be so unable to handle even basic technical matters with even an iota of comprehension, having them bungle up things so badly in the face of so much easy to rely on precedent. Being sweet talked by Oracle's lawyers into believing a header file is anything greater than interface definiton is either incompetence, or some really vicious pro-business hellworld shit.

Governments have no problem allowing de facto specifications to be closed. 5G is heavily patent protected, for example. MPEG is heavily patent protected.

Typically patents "essential" for a standard are licensed on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms. But you do still have to go and pay for the license (sometimes from all the individual companies that have patents, sometimes from a consortium that represents the entire patent pool for a standard).

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