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| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 11:33 PM EDT |
I'm not going to try to answer all of your questions, but I am going to pick one
nit, if you will allow me.
The copyrightability of the structure, sequence, and organization of computer
programs has been established as a concept in US law for 26 years now. It comes
from the 3rd circuit court of appeals decision in Whelan v. Jaslow in 1986. It
may or may not be a reasonable way to approach the protectable non-literal
elements of software, but SSO is an established legal tool of analysis.
In that decision, the court stated that structure, sequence, and organization
are all synonymous terms as applied to computer programs. What exactly that
*means* must be found in the cases that use the term, and should be in the
briefs somewhere. If it's not it's going to be very difficult for the judge and
jury to find for the plaintiff.
Also, there does not need to be a legal definition of API (although there might
be - I don't know) for you to sue over it. What the parties are doing is
establishing a meaning for API within the context of the litigation. It may or
may not be adopted by other courts and other litigants and become part of the
law, or it may not. That is just one way that the common law evolves.
Personally, I think that the judge and jury are going to have a hard time
finding that the plaintiff has proved its case on a preponderance of the
evidence - or more simply, that based on what they are allowed to consider as
evidence it is more likely than not that what the plaintiff is claiming has
happened.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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