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> - I come to HN to hear people's opinions and learn from them, even if they are dissenting. It's fine to disagree, but do not silence people for thinking differently. Every constructive contribution should be part of the discussion.

While I agree with you, pg (in)famously stated that it was OK to down vote to express disagreement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171). Would be nice to have dang change the "official" stance on this though.

Again, pardon my ignorance, my only attempt at API use resulted in a very poorly programmed python app that was supposed to tell me which train to take . . .

but isn't that just using the HTTP/1.1 GET method? Just using someone else's API with a new paramter isn't an expressive action and clearly isn't copyrightable.

But the court would say the HTTP/1.1 GET [url] api is copyrighted by whoever wrote the HTTP spec.

The court didn't rule than ANY api is copyrightable. Just that the specific Java ones at issue where.

For example, Copyright law has what is called the "merger doctrine" which essentially says that if there is only one or maybe a few ways to implement something, then it isn't copyrightable.

So while you can copyright Microsoft Excel, you probably can't copyright a simple method that adds two intergers together. There is essentially only one way to do it.

The Fed Cir. in Oracle rejected that argument because there are unlimited ways to implement the Java libraries API. Why did Google even call them java.XXXXXXX.XXXX when they could have been Android.XXX.XXX, etc.

There is another doctrine that states that industry convention can't be copyrighted. GET is industry convention and would never be copyrightable. But the data structure it send back may or may not be.

> " Why did Google even call them java.XXXXXXX.XXXX when they could have been Android.XXX.XXX, etc."

That wouldn't be implementing the Java APIs any more, as evidenced by the fact that no code relying on the Java APIs would be able to compile against your hypothetical Android standard library. By the Java language's own definition, changing the package and class names makes it a different API.

>The judgement is setting a precedent in defining an API by its routes and not by what or how it processes data.

More generally, the ruling is bad because patents are supposed to be for an implementation, not an interface. For how you accomplished something, not the accomplishment. For a combustion engine, not "being able to get into a box and exiting at your destination in a short time".

Every outrageous parent grant seems to have this attribute: the problem with one-click is how the patent covered "everything that accomplishes one-click", not "our particular solution for getting one-click to happen".

Here, they're patenting the accomplishment of "making this call get this result", not "how we managed to get that response to that call".

The trial at this point is entirely about copyright, not patents