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| Authored by: Ian Al on Friday, April 20 2012 @ 10:59 AM EDT |
I think calris74's description of the API genre is very good, but I have been
here too long to be a sufficiently lay judge.
Your comment is on point. Oracle claim there is protectable SSO in the Java API
Specification compilation of compilations. They further claim that Harmony
infringed on that copyright material in the writing of their API implementation
source code and the resulting compiled bytecode.
I am still wrestling with the issue that Google stipulate that copying the
Harmony API code copies the Oracle SSO, It still seems like a matter of law
whether the SSO in the Specification is protectable.
I think the reason that the judge is not ready is that he needs more facts about
what constitutes the API. He has caught on that an API package is a compilation,
but is it a compilation of interfaces.
I think a parallel is the hardware I/O interface on a desk-top computer. You can
claim that the IOI Specification includes all the individual interfaces of the
computer. These are divided into two classes; the internal IOI package and the
external IOI package. The external package may contain several separate IOIs in
the sub-class, USB 2 and several in the sub-class, video sockets. It might have
one Ethernet IOI.
The USB and the video are separate interfaces and the rules for user access are
different. The implementation by the computer is also different. Each interface
in the IOI Specification is a different technical exercise. The computer
assembler shows great skill in the SSO of the computer IOI, a task which has
taken years of effort and knowledge.
Each separately accessed function has an API. The access to, and implementation
of, each function of an API is a technical exercise in its own right. The
grouping of APIs in packages is a different, but important exercise. The
selection of the entire set is a further technical exercise. There can only be
SSO in packages and in the whole API specification and so that is where
protectable creative expression, if any, must be sought.
---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid![ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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