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APIs vs. API *Documentation* | 104 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
APIs vs. API *Documentation*
Authored by: tknarr on Saturday, April 21 2012 @ 01:36 PM EDT

Actually, you can copyright header files. You just can't copyright the abstract declarations those header files are an embodiment of. The problem for the most part is that the abstract declarations are the only significant things embodied in the header files, so the majority of their content falls outside the scope of copyright protection. The complete file would be protected, so you couldn't make a verbatim copy of it and use it as-is, but for the most part you couldn't use the mere fact that "double sin( double value);" appears in both to show infringement.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Goes to Abstraction/Filtration
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 08:30 AM EDT
You can copyright header files, however because much of it is functional,
abstract, result of requirement or otherwise not protected, you must first
remove those parts before looking for infringement.


This is one of the reasons why Oracle denied that the API was a compilation, as
an Abstraction/Filtration analysis would have naturally followed. Oracle stated
explicitly that such an analysis was not required, because they are not arguing
that those elements are protected, only that they arranged them in a very
special creative way (SSO).

That might be true at an extreme stretch, for example why is the StringBuffer
class in java.lang instead of java.nio with all of the other $TypedBuffer
classes, so please please please Mr Judge can we have our damages and tell the
world All your Phone are belong to us.

But let's hope not eh?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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