I think Judge Alsup was thinking too many moves ahead. As the coder's
mantra goes, premature optimization is the root of all evil.
Yes, Judge
Alsup must surely anticipate ruling that the APIs of themselves are not legally
protectable even as to SSO, because the functionality of the declarations
overwhelms the slight choices that can be made as to creative expression (order
of arguments, namings of various packages, classes, methods, etc.). Merger
doctrine seems well suited to such a ruling.
But as he articulated, by
allowing the jury to decide based on an assumption/instruction that the SSO
elements of the APIs are protectable, the appellate court may have enough of a
factual record to resolve any overturning of his ruling without remanding for a
new jury trial.
From a coder's perspective this seems a lot like trying to
save instruction cycles in a future routine by taking extra steps early in the
program. The result may be the proverbial BWOT (big waste of time) if a
mistrial results.
--- "Prolog is an efficient programming language
because it is a very stupid theorem prover." -- Richard O'Keefe [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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