APIs, as Sun's CTO told you, are not blueprints.
When Schmidt
testified before Congress saying APIs are not blueprints he was the
CTO of Sun:
When we discuss interfaces, it is
important to carefully note the distinction between an interface specification
and an actual product, which has interfaces that conform to the
specification.
Interface specifications are merely the words that describe
the interface and which allows two components to work together or interoperate.
They are not blueprints nor recipes for actual products. Let me repeat that,
interface specifications are not blueprints nor recipes for making knockoffs
or clones.
...
With respect to intellectual property rights, Sun
strongly believes in and will defend the rights of intellectual property owners
to maximize their returns on product implementations. At that same time, we
believe that interface specifications are not protectable under
copyright.
The article goes on to say that Judge Alsup is not
going to allow this to be seen by the jury because it is "[h]istorical
information that is too old [and] has only marginal relevance to Google’s
equitable defenses". It would be very bizarre if the fact that APIs are
not blueprints would have changed during that time. Sure, policies can change
but facts don't.
It is a shame that the judge disallowed this and then
lets Oracle go on about APIs being blueprints. Letting Google cite the factual
claims without the policy claims would have been a reasonable compromise.
Nonetheless, whether the jury gets to hear it or not, the fact remains that it
was Sun's CTO who said APIs are not blueprints (although I'm sure Google says it
too).
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Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in
— the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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