There seems to be no clear and consistent case law answering the question: "can APIs be protected by copyright?" In his ruling, Judge Alsup did an excellent job collecting all the pertinent rulings from all the circuits. IMO he made a clear case for why APIs should not be protected by copyright. He specifically said he collected all this information in his ruling to make the job of the higher courts easier. Both parties are extremely well funded and they seem intent on appealing this as far as they can.

I think the reason we have no clear and recent case law on this subject is because almost everyone assumed APIs could not be copyrighted so there were no recent law suits (except this one) where the issue came up.

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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

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