Dangerous Decision in Oracle v. Google: Federal Circuit Reverses Sensible Lower Court Ruling on APIs | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Dangerous Decision in Oracle v. Google: Federal Circuit Reverses Sensible Lower Court Ruling on APIs | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Today's court decision to allow Oracle to claim copyright on Java APIs is dangerous for the future of the Internet.
We're still digesting today's lengthy decision in the Oracle v. Google appeal,
but we're disappointed—and worried. The heart of the appeal was whether
Oracle can claim a copyright on Java APIs and, if so, whether Google
infringed that copyright. According to the Federal Circuit today, the
answer to both questions was a qualified yes—with the qualification
being that Google may have a fair use defense.
Quick background: When it implemented the Android OS, Google wrote
its own version of Java. But in order to allow developers to write their
own programs for Android, Google relied on Java APIs. Application
Programming Interfaces are, generally speaking, specifications that
allow programs to communicate with each other. So when you type a letter
in a word processor, and hit the print command, you are using an API
that lets the word processor talk to the printer driver, even though
they were written by different people.
