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| Authored by: bugstomper on Saturday, May 26 2012 @ 05:19 PM EDT |
| The decision reads pretty much like a copy of the arguments in the Connectix
brief.
Relevant to Oracle v Google is this part, in which I have
bolded certain phrases:
There is no question that the
Sony BIOS contains unprotected functional elements. Nor is it disputed that
Connectix could not gain access to these unprotected functional elements
without copying the Sony BIOS. Sony admits that little technical information
about the functionality of the Sony BIOS is publicly available. The Sony
BIOS is an internal operating system that does not produce a screen display to
reflect its functioning. Consequently, if Connectix was to gain access
to the functional elements of the Sony BIOS it had to be through a form of
reverse engineering that required copying the Sony BIOS onto a computer.
Sony does not dispute this proposition.
The question
then becomes whether the methods by which Connectix reverse-engineered the Sony
BIOS were necessary to gain access to the unprotected functional elements
within the program. We conclude that they were.
Not being a
lawyer, I could not say whether you can use as precedent that fact that the
court's decision only makes sense if you assume that what was copied from the
BIOS software, which was the same as what is being called the "SSO" of the API
in Oracle v Google, is what is being called "unprotected functional elements". I
can see Oracle arguing that since Sony never included SSO in their claims and
never disputed the Connectix argument that they were unprotected functional
elements, that the issue of whether it is protected was not before the court and
so was not decided by this case. What is certain is that the court's decision
does assume that it is not protected, and what it assumes is not protected
directly corresponds to the "SSO" in Oracle v Google.
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