Let Oracle own API's, Justice Dept tells top court in surprise filing
fortune.com
fortune.com
The Solicitor General does not understand that APIs are a formalized description of "methods of operation" (page 14). I suggest reading the entire advisory, it's quite frustrating and contradicts itself.
BUT!
At the White House level, incompetence equals malice. We have every right to expect competence from a level as high as the White House.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/going-dark-are-technology-p...
That's why the US shouldn't allow software patents. Software is either mathematical or a formalized description of a method of operation.
Here's a claim from the infamous one-click patent:
1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising: under control of a client system,
displaying information identifying the item; and in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;
under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,
receiving the request;
retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and
generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item
whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.
It's a description alright, but there's nothing mathematical or formalized about it (though a software implementation would be a lot of code - formalized description - that applies a bunch of mathematics).
The goodness of patents depends on them being inobvious, and the receipient of the patent actually disclosing something useful. Otherwise, once again, the government is just granting a state-enforced monopoly on something, rather arbitrarily.
The problems with "IP" don't rest merely with distinguishing "idea" from "instantiation" (or whatever the legal term is), but rather derive from a much deeper level of problem and paradox.
As for method signatures, at a human readable level, they are as protected as any other code. Note that copyright protects expression rather than what the code does. So File.open(fname) and open(fname, 'r') and new File(fname) are all different expressions of the concept of "open a file with a given name)". The concept is not covered, but the specific expression is. Of course, a single method is not sufficient, but this case involves a collection of hundreds of such signatures.
I can't agree about method signatures, though. They are like a language, a format, a protocol, none of which are protectable.
Then what exactly is an API, if it's so clear and simple to define in your opinion?
Depending on how one stretches it, everything that is not assembly is an API. I don't know the details of the particular legal argument involved but it's going to get very murky if you claim certain levels of abstraction are copy-rightable and others are not.
The concept of a function with the name cupcake that takes an integer and returns an integer is different than the description "int cupcake(int x)." The interoperability aspect is a red herring--there is no right to interoperate.
That's not the way most people are using the term, if you are going to use it differently from everyone else, you should clarify the meaning of your usage of the term.
> The concept of a function...is different than the description...
I would say that's either not true or entirely non-obvious, because to establish that the concept is what is being described in the later case is you had to provide some form of description in the previous case, in this case:
> a function with the name cupcake that takes an integer and returns an integer
> int cupcake(int x)
> The interoperability aspect is a red herring--there is no right to interoperate.
Not a lawyer, but I was under the impression that the Supreme court indeed has and at times does consider the effect on the common good from a particular interpretation of a law in their decision making.
How do people use the term "method of operation?" I'm trying to draw your attention to the distinction between the abstract process of walking (moving your legs in a particular way), and concrete descriptions of that method.
> I would say that's either not true or entirely non-obvious, because to establish that the concept is what is being described in the later case is you had to provide some form of description in the previous case, in this case:
Sure, any abstract concept cannot be discussed by humans without reducing it to a written or spoken description. But that does not mean that the concept and the description are the same thing.
> happens to be the common-english equivalent for
Or "fn cupcake(x: i32) -> i32" or "function cupcake(x: integer) : integer;" etc. There are many different concrete descriptions of the abstract concept of a function taking an integer and returning an integer.
If the copyrightable work is the description of the API... then I would argue that simply writing "int cupcake(int x)" is not expressive in a way that can be copyrighted, since it is really the only precise way of describing the bytecode. However any extra information (such as Javadoc comments or other documentation) could definitely be expression.
If the implementation, CODE(!), is of course a formalized description of methods of operation, the declaring code (or API) is providing a means of access to it. Something that takes quite a bit of thought and creativity to do well.
Google didn't just copy the "heading" java.lang.Math.max() they also copied the contract that calling this method should always return the bigger of the two arguments. Ergo, the "content" under the heading is the same, or rather the any differance between the content of Oracle's book and Google's book is irrelevant
As any programmer knows, you code against interfaces not implementations. And if you don't realize that declaring those interfaces take both effort and creativity then you probably aren't a very good programmer.
Irrelevant, the contract is not part of the trial
If any language has a function max that takes two integer values and doesn't return bigger, that language isn't worth bothering.
And as any (competent) programmer knows, the "interface" in "code against interfaces not implementations" is merely a homonym of the "interface" in "application programming interface".
Never, could have I ever predicted to one day see that as an actual excerpt from an article.
By the way, this is a wonderful exercise of effort on our part as a society. Really very important we sort these these nuances out. People may be dying, the poor may be getting poorer, but this is what is important. /s
It's sarcastic, I get it, but it is also profoundly stupid. Sorting out intellectual property and ownership is _the_ 21st century problem as we continually move away from the importance of physical objects and towards the importance of pure information.
I hope this drags on forever. It's fun watching pigs in mud, aka lawyers in the Valley.
Uhm, no. Only for the HN crowd and maybe open source.
There are a lot more and more pressing problems that have to do with things like the environment, food production, reproduction, migration and democracy vs. corporatism vs. ideology.
It's not just about lawyers and multinationals dukeing it out.
Reorganizing the world's economy away from physical works to intellectual ones is an entirely new problem and will be on the scale of the industrial revolution.
The traditional reason is to grant incentive for its creation in the first place. One primary example has been medical advances. With the benefit of a (temporary) monopoly on the sales of a new drug, the company has an incentive to create it in the first place. Perhaps we wouldn't have as many life saving advances without IP protection. A secondary reason is that it requires public disclosure. One alternative to patent protection is to keep a production method a trade secret. So companies, if they are sufficiently secretive, could have effective if not legally enforced monopolies due to such secrets. So is it worth the tradeoff of having IP protection?
COST: a time-limited monopoly; limited incremental innovation on derivatives of the protected work during the lifetime of the protection.
BENEFIT: potentially more innovative goods and services are created to begin with; the means and methods behind these innovations are publicly documented for future replication or derivative work .
I'm think it is worth the tradeoff both for copyright protection and patents in general. But the specific laws are certainly not optimal as currently written and enforced by the courts. Durations for both patents and copyright are too long. Plenty of things that are patentable should not be, due to them being too obvious, trivial, or just not appropriate for protection.
Also the remedy for infringement has multiple options. You could allow general infringement, at statutory royalty rates. I think Canada has experimented with this for copyright, and the US as standard (but private) arrangements for the licensing of music. You could require a fraction of any profits. These provide the monopoly rents, but not a monopolization of production and derivatives. We are still learning what the optimal tradeoffs are for society. I hope we have more experimentation on regulatory regimes to identify the best compromises.
Most certainly, that's the nominal, and even in the USA, constitutional basis of copyright and patents. But the actual implementation over the last 100 years seems to have veered away from creating incentives, and into creating something naively akin to ownership, with state enforcement.
I hope we have more experimentation on regulatory regimes
Based on the CAFC's decision here, and it's history, we're only going to experiment with "more" and "stricter" regimes. We've (the USA) never really experimented with loosening "IP" monopolies, despite data and logic pointing towards shorter monopolies as closer to optimum.
I'd also have to take exception the "pharmacy has benefitted from long-lasting monopolies". That's probably true simplistically (When was the last time Smith Klein Glaxo didn't turn a huge profit?) but in the manner of creating tons of medicines for The Rest of Us, it seems to have failed. India and some African countries actually allow infringing compounds, because the price of authentic compounds is set high. Also, the people of the USA pay way more for medications than most other countries. This whole topic is subject to argument, but certainly pharmacy patents relate to high prices and unavailability.
Existing IP regimes aren't perfect, but appropriate protections for IP are fundamental to the prosperity of the United States. You're way better off as a Californian in a world where Chinese people have to pay tons of money to California for something they build domestically.
Congratulations, you've just blurred the issue beyond repair. Now, not only do I have no idea what "IP" is, other than some vague "information" (bits and bytes? phrases on paper? verbal instructions? URLs? methods of production?), I have no idea how to tell if some particular piece of information is "stolen" or "not stolen". I have to go ask someone (who?) to check.
My basic contention is that considering ideas or concepts or math as property, warps society beyond what most of us would like, and therefore, we should do away with the concept of "IP". We'll have to figure out something other than an "IP regime" to create appropriate incentives, but the possible disincentives from just about any "IP regime" are too bad to actually implement those "IP regimes".
To tie back to the original point by 'colechristensen: the U.S. is rapidly becoming a country where people spend all day working on products the end result of which is intangible. As production of tangible goods becomes commoditized because of robots and 3D printing, it's going to be the production of intangible goods that's going to give countries' competitive advantages in the global marketplace.
Likewise, take a step back. Maybe take two. What our our priorities as a society, as a species? These two companies with loads of money and resources, battling it out over if API's are copyrightable. I'm not saying that's not a significant legal matter, I'm saying in context of everything else, it's squabble. It's part of a big circle jerk that companies play with each other in attempt to screw one another so they can make more money.
I guess the future really will be nothing but lawyers.
There will be a lot more of those poor people you were talking about if APIs are allowed to be copyrighted. It will stifle innovation in the US, and drive talented programmers to either seek a different profession, or move to a country that isn't draconian.
Also, what happens to software impacts every other realm. Software moves your money, irrigates your crops, drives your car, and runs your pacemaker. It matters.
Any reimplementation of an API? Illegal. IBM compatible PCs? Illegal. Any emulator? Illegal. Binary-compatible reimplementations? Illegal.
That cases raises an interesting precedent issue that I have not been able to find the answer to. Let's assume that the Supreme Court decides not to take the appeal, so the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable stands.
What courts is this precedent for?
Generally, the way precedent works is that if appeals from court X go to court Y, then the decisions of court Y are precedent for court X. If court Z is not on the appeals path from X, then the decisions of court Z are not binding precedent for X.
For copyright cases, appeals normally do NOT go to the CAFC. They go the Courts of Appeal for the circuit in which the court appealed from resides. E.g., copyright cases from district courts in the 2nd Circuit go to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
In general, that is the appeals path from the Federal district court. Copyright cases aren't specifically singled out.
Oracle vs. Google was tried in the 9th Circuit. If it had just been a copyright case, the appeal would have went to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, it was also a patent case, and patent cases are singled out. They are explicitly diverted from the normal appeals path and go to the CAFC. If the case is also some other kind of case, such as a copyright case or an antitrust case, the CAFC is allowed to hear those aspects too.
So does this mean that if P sues D in the 9th circuit over copyright, with no patent issues or any other issues that would bring the appeal to the CAFC, then the district court would only use the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for precedent (which I believe disagrees with CAFC), and ignore CAFC's Google vs. Oracle copyright ruling?
Even more confusing, suppose P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th Circuit. The district court figures that the case, if appealed, will go to the CAFC, and so follows CAFC precedent for the copyright aspects. Now suppose after the court rules, neither party appeals the court's decisions on any of the patent issues. The only appeal copyright issues. Does the case still go to CAFC? Or does it go the 9th Circuit? If it goes to the 9th Circuit, do they apply their own copyright precedent or CAFC precedent?
On the question in your last paragraph, where P sues D over copyright and patents in the 9th circuit, and there are only appeals of copyright issues, the appeal goes to the CAFC by statute.
That raises the possibility of copyright plaintiffs tossing in a patent claim that they have no intention of trying to actually win on, just to make sure that they will get CAFC's view of copyright instead of the 9th Circuit's view.
The CAFC itself would be bound to apply 9th Circuit precedent, as it purported to do here. Again in principle, a prior copyright decision by the CAFC applying 9th Circuit law would not be binding precedent on a CAFC panel hearing some later copyright case arising out of the 9th Circuit.
> The nine justices request that U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, Jr., the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, weigh in on about 20 cases a year in which the federal government has a strong interest. The justices generally give greater weight to what he or she says than other third parties that take a side in a case, an influence which has caused the solicitor general to be dubbed the "tenth justice."
Question: what the fuck?
[0]: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/15/google-oracle-lawsuit-idUSL1N0Y32YG20150515The court takes this opinion into account, it's not that Oracle and Google aren't listened to, it's that the Federal government basically gets a chance to say what it thinks.
American here.
We are aware of the problem, but due to high call volume and a totally corrupt/captured/entrenched corporate & government bureaucracy, you may experience long wait times.
[1] For €1000 sold to a customer, the employee gets a purchasing power of less than €300, even in the absence of expenses and stakeholder dividends, because our VAT is 20%, mandatory contributions 46%, income tax 10-15%, land tax 5-10%, and laws are so circumvoluted that the tax accountant takes 45€ per paysheet per employee and charge about 2000€ yearly to the company. And the founder gets to spend >10% of his time on the phone with administrations or filling forms. I know the IRS of USA isn't much better, but I've lived in Australia and administrations make a difference on CEO time.
[2] I'm aware of that the French government provides benefits for startups like CRI (Crédit Impot Recherche), which basically funds the PhDs you hire, but it wastes paperwork pumping money from companies into companies, requires a person to manage the grant, and isn't socially fair since it advantages those with a PhD.
I could always blame TTIP agreements for advantaging Americans, but we, French people, tackle down our own companies on a massive scale.
French people, please don't answer "Hey man the CCI can help you for your paperwork if you fill in this form and post it to this address and fill the file they return and the RSI will take a levy of 0,015% for training (truth) and ... form ... and ... paper ... document... and... minitax... organisme social... excess... deductible for SMEs if you tick the box 5UV and ..." Please. I just wanted to hire and code, and the Australian PAYG paysheet is frigging awesome.
That's for your regular, main job. Side job income is burdened with taxes and rules more heavily...
But I would agree labor and small business are taxed too much. They need to do something about that (and not just raise VAT like they're talking about, which is again basically taxing labor).
Note that there's an ANSI standard for C -- and while I don't know what kind of license it is connected with off the top of my head -- it's very idea is to serve as a reference for implementers.
Note also, that if I remember correctly, the whole thing (Google vs Oracle) was tied to what Microsoft did with their "Java that wasn't quite java" -- and that what Google did was something similar: they took the API, but didn't make "a java" -- they made Dalvik/Dex etc -- which only sort-a-kinda was java.
As for "The C Programming Language", I can't find anything about license in my copy, and the copyright page doesn't exactly encourage re-use of the code-examples:
"Copyright 1988, 1978 by Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced ... yada yada yada"
So using some startling code such as "hello, world" -- as foundation for writing out something -- would probably not be legal. Even if the text does allude to the fact that a programmer is expected to draw upon the examples for inspiration.
I'm not sure that alone is enough to grant fair use.
It certainly seems that the examples in the book is similar to that in the java documentation -- and that neither gives an explicit license for use. Perhaps now AT&T owns everything, including Oracle?
And there's the problem. "IP" laws and customs will be vague enough that the rest of us will have to totally steer clear of any "IP" problems. It costs far too much to get the "probably" erased or the "not legal" reversed.
Litigation is for gamblers or aristocrats. Strict "IP" will only lead to less innovation, higher prices, and the creation of a semi-aristocracy, the "rightsholders".
Although, I'd be surprised if there haven't been rulings on similar cases before. Either way - the code from a text book, and code from technical documentation are probably not the same under the law.
That doesn't mean I don't think it's silly to hold APIs to be copyright-able -- I just think the two questions are different: 1) Is sample code provided for the purpose of re-use, fair-use (or something equivalent)? and 2) Are APIs copyrightable?
long strtol(const char *s, char **endp, int base)K&R and Ken Thompson et al. were working for Bell Labs and assigned copyright to AT&T. AT&T cooperated with early open source programmers at Cal to produce UNIX software. The negotiations between Cal and AT&T produced a license from AT&T for UNIX and C as embodied in Berkeley UNIX. Berkeley BSD grants a license to anyone in the world to reproduce standard libraries and the rest of the UNIX system.
Thus anyone who writes a standard UNIX library has a solid license chain back to KR&T for the APIs regardless of the result of this lawsuit.
Now, the BIOS in your PC -- and the billion PC clones produced in the past 35 years -- becomes a criminal offense if the CAFC result is upheld. Quite a lot of other APIs that have been standardized under the laws as we understood them for the 50 years before CAFC reversed them soon become illegal forever.
But UNIX and its various flavors is fine.
Python, Perl, Ruby, C++, and C programmers should be fine as will be their standard libraries.
And we'll all adapt by not using proprietary APIs from now on. You'll have to be careful about code licenses and API licenses instead of just code licenses. It's a headache and a large one-time cost to the industry in libraries we'll lose forever but in the long run it'll be fine for programmers.
The real danger from the CAFC is the way they've been expanding patents. You can't escape from patents just by getting licenses or not copying others' work.
This is the exact opposite of promoting progress, and this type of behavior needs to be overturned on constitutional grounds. This is so far beyond what the Constitution authorizes Congress to oversee with respect to patent and copyright law that the specifics of the case are almost meaningless. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that anyone would stop developing APIs or turn them into trade secrets unless they can be copyrighted. 40+ years of sharing and software development prove otherwise.
Time for the Federal Circuit and Justice Department to wake up, or for there to be an investigation into bribery and corruption in East Texas and DC. Preferably both.
The ones doing the copy were the programmers from Apache Foundation
See, the whole problem of this case rests in that you have to "spend time" and "apply logic" to agree with Google's position. Which, pretty much throws out any hope of getting a "higher court" (or higher-anybody) to adopt Google's stance on the issue.
Actually the poster "tajen" pretty much hit the nail on the head for this issue -- essentially, adopting Google's stance unfortunately requires a degree of competence and logical commitment beyond the comprehension of most higher officials. So, even if this goes to the Supreme Court Oracle has this case pretty much won...
I don't know that that's the case; even if we assume that the CAFC is wrong from the perspective of application of the law (rather than merely correctly applying the law to reach an outcome that we don't like), certainly, lots of observers think that the CAFC is an especially problematic court among Courts of Appeal, and even on the issues that it specializes in (which copyright is not one of; Oracle v. Google got there instead of the 9th Circuit because of patent issues in the case, even though the thing we're all focused on is a copyright issue.)
So, I don't think that "the CAFC messed this up", even if taken as gospel, necessarily demonstrates a relation between "level" of court and competence.
> The DOJ's actions reinforce this trend too.
Since the DoJ isn't a higher court than the CAFC, I don't see how you can reasonably say that.
You can simply say, 1) "Oracle owns Java" 2) "APIs are part of Java" 3) "Google uses Java APIs" 4) Therefore, "Google uses something Oracle owns" so Oracle should win this case
Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance. But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue? Deep enough to understand Google's position?
You could, but neither CAFC nor DoJ did, so that's irrelevant.
> Now of course, you can apply some deeper logic to uphold Google's stance.
Or you could apply deeper logic and still uphold Oracle's stance. Now, I tend to think the District Court decision here was more correct than the CAFC decision (or the DoJ position), but I don't think as a legal decision its as clearly correct as some people would like to claim -- even though its also the outcome I prefer independent of what is correct under the current law.
> But that's the problem --- how "far" or how "deeper" do you expect the higher courts to look into this issue?
Fairly deeply on the legal side -- that's what appellate courts exist to do, and they are generally fairly good at it (though they do fail spectacularly at times, but not worse than trial courts, though with higher courts they get more attention for it) -- perhaps less so on the factual side (again, this is by design -- and why appellate courts often resolve legal disputes and send the factual matters back to the trial courts to resolve given the legal clarification.)
> Deep enough to understand Google's position?
I don't think the CAFC or DoJ failed to understand Google's position. Disagreement isn't the same thing as lack of understanding.
> In November 2006, Sun open-sources Java.
>In November 2007, Sun approves Google's use of Java in Android.
> April of 2009, Oracle Corp. announced that it would be acquiring Sun
Subsequently Oracle figured it could get some money from Google by requiring a license fee
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an...
It gets more complicted though, see http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-history-of-java-and-an... and a bunch of other stuff
[1] http://www.cnet.com/news/judge-william-alsup-master-of-the-c...
Yes. As mentioned in the linked article, the Federal Circuit court overturned Alsup's ruling. The Alsup ruling came from a district court, and the Federal Circuit has the authority to overturn it. From there, the question can go on to the US Supreme Court.
That Google would be in the right by copying the declaring code of 27(!) different namespaces is nothing but crazy.
http://www.fosspatents.com/2015/05/us-dept-of-justice-finds-...
You can happily take the opposing view simply because he is involved and is probably biased, but that will make your viewpoint almost entirely baseless.
Should Microsoft sue wine developers?
Should Amazon sue anyone making a compatible EC2 API?
Should it be legal for me to copy all of the declaring code of my employers product and after writing my own implementation selling it as my own product/work under a different name?
edit: Straight from Wikipedia: "Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues.[4] [4] https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=37364#37364 "
An API is an API and it will be the same if it is reverse engineered or copied the declaration.
And Google didn't copied without permission Sun's code, they used Apache Harmony
How do you think compatible API implementations have been done until now?
Do you think that I should be allowed to steal the declaring code of someone elses proprietary solution and pawn of as my own?
Wine is also something done explicitly to create compatability, Google made sure Android was not compatible with "regular" Java.
Tell us what can benefit Oracle by suing Google.
> Wine is also something done explicitly to create compatability, Google made sure Android was not compatible with "regular" Java.
Android is compatible with Java syntax. And even Java ME, the java developed for mobile platforms, is not compatible with regular java so, what is your point?