I believe you misunderstand current US law. Original parent is closer, but I
seems to miss one of Mr. Van Nest's main points in his 982 brief, namely that
- In neither of its copyright registrations did Snoracle call out by
name specific packages upon which they assert copyright.
- Neither did they
attempt to demonstrate ownership/authorship of specific packages or components
in court.
Its not that Snoracle might not have copyrights in
specific packages or components, its that they are suing over these 37 specific
API's and 8 or 9 specific files without having established they own copyrights
over those 45 or 46 components specifically.
The copyright protection is
there if Snoracle are the owners. But they need to demonstrate ownership,
and as some impertinent twit at Keker & Van Nest has observed, not only they
haven't, they haven't even tried.
Looks like Mr. Jacobs was having a BSF
moment.
Which leaves only Java 1.4/5.0 as a collective "work as a whole".
Which is so much bigger than the 8 test files, rangecheck(), and 37 API's that
Google feels even if they are protectable, their use is de minimus and
fair use.
Except that Sun's original Java 1.4/5.0 copyright
registrations were not as a "collection", but as a "compilation" with
enumerated exceptions. And Oracle's later registration as "collection" can't add
any protections beyond what were already there in the "compilation." Which
Oracle is what Google then thinks should be the basis of determining what is
protected, if but Oracle had only shown it was theirs.
(Gaagh! I'm not a
lawyer. There's a *lot* in Mr. Van Nest's 982 brief that is just beyond me. Far,
far beyond me.)
---
Real Programmers mangle their own memory. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
| 
