decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
No one? | 503 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Isn't this more accurately described as a bench trial?
Authored by: Ian Al on Saturday, April 21 2012 @ 04:09 PM EDT
IIRC, the hurdle drops to the level of any civil trial, i.e. the preponderance
of truth rather than the higher hurdle set by summary judgement.



---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Clarification
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 21 2012 @ 09:02 PM EDT
The classpath exception was not designed to license use of APIs. That is because
nobody ever imagined that APIs themselves might be copyrightable.

The classpath exception is there because people were worried about a different
issue. When APIs are used snippets of the compiled code in the library are
copied in order to use them. People were worried that this could be contorted
into a legal argument that applications using the libraries were derivative
works of the libraries.

Many doubt that the exception is even needed. No programmer would ever try to
make this argument. Most view copying incidental to normal use of the library as
akin to the copy made on your retina when you read a book. It is merely part of
the expected use of the library and there is an argument to be made that there
is at least an implicit license to do this, although as far as I know this
argument has never been tested in court. The classpath exception was included
mostly to assuage what many viewed as excessive concerns on the part of
corporate legal departments that the GPL might be "viral" and
contaminate other programs. But even those excessively cautious legal
departments never considered that the APIs themselves might be subject to a
copyright claim.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Not summary judgement this time arround...
Authored by: mtew on Saturday, April 21 2012 @ 10:35 PM EDT
This is the actual trial. The judge does _not_ have to bend over backward to
give the 'moving party' all benefits of the doubt, at least to the extent there
is no 'moving party', only his own decision on how to proceed. He can now take
the misinformation out of the equation when he makes his decision.

Karma!


---
MTEW

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

interesting point as to Classpath
Authored by: hardmath on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 01:43 PM EDT
The classpath exception allows linkage of nonGPL'd code in a combined
work. I don't think this authorizes much of anything in a work with no
dependence on GPL'd editions of the accused API libraries.


---
Do the arithmetic or be doomed to talk nonsense. -- John McCarthy (1927-2011)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

No one?
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 06:25 PM EDT
"Without this provision almost no one would use Java."

Why would anyone working on a project that they intend to GPL care? Are you
claiming that "no one" would ever write code intending to place it
under the GPL?

This sounds like you have bought into the lies of the copyright maximalists that
claim no one would create anything without copyrights. History simply proves
this false. Such things DO get created. Not everyone hates sharing, not
everyone works solely because they expect money in return.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • No one? - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 22 2012 @ 11:45 PM EDT
    • No one? - Authored by: xtifr on Monday, April 23 2012 @ 01:07 AM EDT
Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )