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A Question on SSO | 275 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Oracle would have quoted the case law every 10 minutes if it existed.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 06:05 PM EDT
From what I remember from previous articles, they initially claimed that there
was a bucket load of case law to support this, and then had to admit that none
in
fact existed.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A Question on SSO
Authored by: nerd6 on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 06:13 PM EDT
The Judge decides if SSO is copyrightable - it's a matter of law. But he
doesn't need to decide that unless the jury finds Google guilty of copyright
infringement over the SSO. If Google is found guilty, he may rule that SSO is
not copyrightable and so Google is off the hook anyway.

If the jury finds Google innocent, the judge doesn't need to worry about the SSO
copyrightability question.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Something that's been bugging me for a while
Authored by: jbb on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 06:53 PM EDT
The last question for the jury relates to Google's estoppel and laches defenses:
... has Google proven that it in fact reasonably relied on such conduct by Sun and/or Oracle in deciding to use the structure, sequence, and organization of the copyrighted compilable code without obtaining a license?
There is no doubt that Oracle is asking the judge to make new law in this case. They admitted it themselves and all the coverage in the tech industry says what a radical change a decision in favor of Oracle would be. No one is even even hinting that Oracle's interpretation is the current status quo.

Given that reality, then it is unlikely there would be any evidence that Google relied on Sun's statements because everyone already knew that APIs could not be copyrighted. It would be like Sun saying the sky is blue and then asking for evidence that Google relied on those statements in order to reach the conclusion that the sky is often blue.

It seems that Oracle is trying use the absurdity and novelty of their own arguments as proof that they must be right. OTOH, this was a special interrogatory and the answer will only be used by the judge in order to help him decide whether to turn the software industry topsy-turvy or not.

---
Our job is to remind ourselves that there are more contexts than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Judge said he would preserve case in the event of overturn.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 07:12 PM EDT
Early on the judge said that he would do this, to prevent a new trial in the
event of a successful appeal.
IE: The jury decides SSO was copied, the judge rules SSO not copyrightable,
Oracle appeals, and if the judge's ruling is overturned, there would be no need
for a new trial.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Yup
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 07:20 PM EDT
This is a classic case of the judge just making up law.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Yup - Authored by: PJ on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 02:26 AM EDT
  • No it's not - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 06:51 AM EDT
Daft rulings
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 07:23 PM EDT
Well, there was an RIAA copyright case where the judge instructed the jury that
copyright infringement could occur even if there was, in fact, no copying. Just
leaving somethere where it *could, in theory* be copied was infringement.

Basically, he told the jury that leaving a book on a table was copyright
infringement because someone might come by and copy it.

The RIAA sure got their money's worth that day. As I recall, he later reversed
himself when he realized what he had done ... but he had still done it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

That's the part I really don't get.
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 08:18 PM EDT
I'm a software developer of 19 years. I'm currently the
Director of Technology at a long time software company...

TECHNICALLY speaking, the idea of SSO is a bunch of BULL.
The compiler/interpreter doesn't care about the order of the
functions in the source code. Normally speaking, the order
is (haphazardly at best) defined by the style of the
programmer. Some folks keep simple in the top of the file,
and define more complex functions later, while others will
move the functions that actually do the heavy lifting to the
TOP of the file so that you see the 'important' functions
first when someone else opens the source file. When you
publicize the documentation, perhaps you even RE-Order them
to
match the docs.

I think that's where Oracle is hanging it's hat. For
whatever reason, they have seized upon this SSO idea since
they
can prove the docs and the code are at LEAST in the same
order as Google's code/docs. I was very surprised that
Google
didn't compare that to say the Harmony docs/code.

For whatever it's worth, my 2 cents is that it still doesn't
(technically) matter. The 'clean room' implementation
(especially for the 3rd party contributors) may have
included a LIST of those functions to be implemented and a
description in ORDER from whoever told them to write the
code. I don't think that Oracle was sticking on the
function
NAME... so the IMPLEMENTATION was still different.

Whomever got the ORDER of the functions from Google to the
3rd parties may have used various tools or auto
documentation
functions that produced results similar to Sun's existing
code. Or even got them from Harmony/Kaffe/etc. IF they
wanted to try and meet the TCK license, they may EVEN have
got them from SUN. To my knowledge, TCK docs were free ...
meaning you could write your code against TCK and then if
you later didn't meet the requirements, you could open
source
or even CLOSE SOURCE the whole thing. You just couldn't
call it java.

I am free to answer any questions... and I'll even give you
a bit of verification for status,experience etc. if you want
to google it.

john.mcspadden.at.gmail.com
vic.dot.com

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

can be considered ...
Authored by: nsomos on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 08:51 PM EDT
Sproggit exclaimed "the one thing that has really caught me
by surprise was the decision of the Court to instruct the
jury that the selection, structure and organisation of an
API can be considered copyright-able."

The key words here are 'can be considered'.
Not at all the same as 'are'.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

A court decision just as absurd...
Authored by: s65_sean on Monday, April 30 2012 @ 08:54 PM EDT
A court decision just as absurd as a finding that the SSO of APIs is
copyrightable was when the courts overruled the USPTO and ruled that computer
software can be patented.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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