Actually, methods and concepts appears to have a common thread through SCO
v. Novell with Boies, Schiller & Flexner.
Copyright protection for
methods and concepts appear contrary to the copyright statute, too. (
17 USC § 102 (b) "In no case does copyright protection for an original work
of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it
is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.")
From the
House of Representatives report H.R. 94-1476 on § 102 in 1978 on the Copyright Act of 1976 which
introduces the latest changes to the particular statute (legislative intent in
making the change, quoted in the district court decision Oracle is appealing,
See
Groklaw - Judge Alsup Rules: Oracle's Java APIs are Not Copyrightable (Order as
text) ~pj):
Nature of copyright
Copyright does
not preclude others from using the ideas or information revealed by the author’s
work. It pertains to the literary musical, graphic, or artistic form in which
the author expressed intellectual concepts. Section 102(b) makes clear that
copyright protection does not extend to any idea, procedure, process, system,
method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in
which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such
work.
Some concern has been expressed lest copyright in computer programs
should extend protection to the methodology or processes adopted by the
programmer, rather than merely to the “writing” expressing his ideas. Section
102(b) is intended, among other things, to make clear that the expression
adopted by the programmer is the copyrightable element in a computer program,
and that the actual processes or methods embodied in the program are not within
the scope of the copyright law.
Section 102(b) in no way enlarges or
contracts the scope of copyright protection under the present law. Its purpose
is to restate, in the context of the new single Federal system of copyright,
that the basic dichotomy between expression and idea remains
unchanged.
This puts the question firmly in the arena of
idea-expression merger also addressed in Judge Alsup's decision:
Id. at 103. Baker also established the “merger” doctrine for systems and methods
intermingled with the texts or diagrams illustrating them:
And
where the art it teaches cannot be used without employing the methods and
diagrams used to illustrate the book, or such as are similar to them, such
methods and diagrams are to be considered as necessary incidents to the art, and
given therewith to the public; not given for the purpose of publication in other
works explanatory of the art, but for the purpose of practical application.
Ibid. It is true that Baker is aged but it is not passé. To
the contrary, even in our modern era, Baker continues to be followed in the
appellate courts, as will be seen below.
In truth Oracle
challenges the courts application of Baker, albeit by
conflation:
By the same token, merger cannot bar copyright
protection for any single line of declaring code—much less for all 7000—unless
the original authors had available to them “only one way” to write them. Satava,
323 F.3d at 812 n.5. But the authors had many options as to
each individual line
and unlimited options as to the selection and arrangement of the 7000 lines
Google copied.
That Oracle makes no distinction between the
interface 'standard' of the API specification and implementation of
particular
functions. You could spend tens of hours or more exploring the contrast between
Judge Alsup's decision's 'APPLICATION OF CONTROLLING LAW TO CONTROLLING FACTS"
and Oracle's refutation of various elements. In particular when Oracle cleverly
organizes their appeal to tell a narrative emphasizing 'sweat of the brow' (or
there must be a pony under there, there's so much manure).
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