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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 06:02 PM EDT |
In future cases, anyone sued for infringing the SSO of APIs may be able to use
this ruling to argue that they aren't copyrightable (for the same reasons that
the Java APIs in this case were not).
Also, if Oracle appeals this decision, its possible a higher court might widen
the ruling.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: maroberts on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 06:09 PM EDT |
Judges are very often reluctant to claim that their ruling stretches to cover
anything mroe than the facts in the case before them; this is certainly true in
England (where I am). Nethertheless, if this ruling is upheld on any appeal, it
will certainly be looked at where similar facts are in evidence, and rulings
given accordingly.
I thought Judge Alsups ruling was quite a good one, and his lengthy explanation
of how Java classes and methods hang together was probably highly necessary in
order to clearly explain the issues to any Appeal Court which would otherwise
have to undergo the same learning curve that the judge did.
One thing I didn't see was mention of the European ruling (unless I missed it)
but I suspect that wasn't a surprise as he wanted his ruling to be solidly based
on US law.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 06:25 PM EDT |
Read the ruling itself. If you read just around pages 16-18 of the PDF, you
should get a feeling that this is a broad and well-founded ruling. Its
precedent goes back as far as 1879, and it quotes from the House Report that
accompanied Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act (enacted in 1976).
IANAL, but I predict that this ruling will be a landmark ruling that will likely
be cited in any similar case.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: deck2 on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 06:27 PM EDT |
I am sure that this will be appealed by Oracle. That will be a good thing as it
will probably end up in front of the Supreme Court. I believe that SCOTUS can
provide a more comprehensive ruling about APIs than this Court or the Appeals
Court.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 31 2012 @ 07:24 PM EDT |
He's constrained by those 9th circuit decisions which came up with the idea of
SSO in the first place, so it's up to the Circuit Court of Appeals to rubbish
the very notion of SSO.
I've heard speculation that he wouldn't even be able to do this much. I'm
grateful that we have such a good judge who worked hard to understand the
technical issues and arrive at the most sensible ruling.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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