Reply to post: Re: War over API

IBM, Microsoft, a medley of others sing support for Google against Oracle in Supremes' Java API copyright case

jilocasin
FAIL

Re: War over API

Hmmm... so much fail it's hard to know where to start.

1) Google knowingly copied code from the Harmony project. That code is licensed under the Apache license, so that was perfectly legal to do. Google re-implemented the Java API. The API is unprotectable by definition, so also perfectly legal.

2) Google is not now claiming fair use because it is an API, they are telling the appellate court that if you are going to misapply the law and make API's subject to copyright (something that never was and still technically isn't) then re-implementing one for interoperability is the quintessential fair use.

3) Yes. You can use the Google API, any of their many API's, however you like, they aren't protectable by copyright (seeing a pattern here?).

4) Google can't use the Java API in violation of the terms set by the Java license, because you can't license an API.

5) Google can control/license how other's use Google Maps, or any other Google service. If you wanted to re-implement the Google Maps API so that yours or someone else's product could call your map service, that currently calls Google Maps, without having to be rewritten that's perfectly legal.

So to sum up, you don't seem to have any idea what an API is, or what it's used for.

I hope the above helps.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon