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Selective citation, sign of a weak case? | 219 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Corrections
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 12:44 AM EST
Please list the error in the title of your post.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Off Topic
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 12:46 AM EST
For all posts that are not on topic. Please make all links
clickable.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Newspicks
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 12:47 AM EST
Please mention the news story's name in the title of the top
post. Please include a link to the story for when it falls
off the home page.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Comes
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 12:49 AM EST
Please post all transcriptions of Comes exhibits here for PJ.
Please post the html in plain old text mode for easy copying.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle continues to try and rewrite history
Authored by: Kilz on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 01:09 AM EST
Page 19 of the brief takes the Lindholm email from 2010 and
places it before the attempt at negotiating a license for
Java in 2005.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Groklaw still makes my day !
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 01:29 AM EST
Ann Droid.
Har De Har Har.
Ill get the popcorn ready.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Just like Oracle never copy anything...
Authored by: TiddlyPom on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 03:10 AM EST
From Mr Ellison who wants to steal from the community Java is open source software (as liberated by Sun) and Oracle want to put restrictions on open source usage to further their own commercial ends.

I bet this won't be aired in respect of the case!

---
Support Software Freedom - use GPL licenced software like Linux and LibreOffice instead of proprietary software like Microsoft Windows/Office or Apple OS/X

[ Reply to This | # ]

Imagine Ford claiming copyright over the automobile
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 04:05 AM EST
On this throry, Ford would had been able to copyright the arrangement and
methods of operation of the motor car, he would would have been able to claim
that any owners manual was a copy of his, because any description of how to the
steering wheel, pedals etc. would just be "paraphrases" of Ford's own
manual. There are only so many ways you can explain "Turn the wheel to make
the car turn corners. Clockwise makes the car turn to the right, anticlockwse to
the left. The more you turn the wheel, the more the car turns."

Explanations of how things work or how to use things are necessarily similar in
meaning. So any functional description is likely to look like a paraphrase of
any other description of the same function. It really doesn't make sense to be
able to claim copyright on such descriptions.

[ Reply to This | # ]

vastly more original, creative, and labor-intensive.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 04:56 AM EST
How is it more original than a short poem? :p
More creative than a jingle? By what measure? ;)
Is labour-intensiveness even relevant?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Of course you end up disagreeing with Boies....
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 05:47 AM EST
He's a big name, and if someone wants to argue a point they are loosing
on, who better to call in? In many ways he's the perfect white knight, at
least from ther point of view.

Luckily the courts have been getting far more suspicious about the dubious
nature of some of the arguments they are seeing.

Wayne
http://madhatter.ca

[ Reply to This | # ]

Re-arguing the merits via fan-fiction
Authored by: scav on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 07:04 AM EST
It seems to me that Oracle are just trying to re-argue the merits of their
case.

But instead of merely telling the same hard-luck story, they are half-way to
framing their argument in the form of Harry Potter fan-fiction. Or rather, the
less enjoyable genre: copyright holder fan-fiction, where you make up stories
about authors and copyright holders instead of the characters in their works.

It's neither convincing nor particularly good fiction. F-

Surely pages wasted on that are not helping them. If they have a tight
argument supported by case law that the district judge made a legal error,
they really should concentrate on that. I suspect they don't.

Unless they are burying it in 200 pages of nonsense specifically to make it
difficult for PJ. But that would be just petty.

---
The emperor, undaunted by overwhelming evidence that he had no clothes,
redoubled his siege of Antarctica to extort tribute from the penguins.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Wow, ono request for remand, only reversal.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 07:24 AM EST
When I read the short "Conclusion" section, the thing that stuck out to me was that it was only asking for a complete reversal of the lowercourts ruling. I searched through the entire document, and the only mention of the word "remand" is in the following paragraph in the "Argument section:

This Court should not stop at finding that Google infringed Oracle’s copyrighted work. A remand to decide fair use is pointless. This Court should rule, as a matter of law, that Google’s commercial use of Oracle’s work in a market where Oracle already competed was not fair use.


So are they basically gambling on an all-or-nothing approach? Maybe the appellate system is different than the District Court, but from what I have learned here on Groklaw over the past 10 years is that a party needs to state all of their arguments and all of their requests for relief in their filings or they may lose the ability to argue those points or to ask for that particular relief at a later time.

It appears that they are trying to back the appeals court into a corner where they only have 2 choices, either to reverse the District Courts ruling in its entirety, or to let it stand in its entirety. Isn't that pretty risky on Oracle's part?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Is Oracle guilt of copyright infringement?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 08:11 AM EST
J. K Rowling still has copyright over the Harry Potter books, individually and collectively. Could Oracle, in quoting chapter titles and other goodies, have violated that copyright? After all they could hardly claim "fair use" since the books are not intended for lawyers.

Probably nothing will happen, but its fun to speculate!

[ Reply to This | # ]

Google did copy Oricals book
Authored by: ThrPilgrim on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 08:58 AM EST
They copied the idea of paragraphs and pages.

Oh and incremental numbering of the pages.

Bad Bad Google.

:-)

---
Beware of him who would deny you access to information for in his heart he
considers himself your master.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Their initial opening is bad.
Authored by: jesse on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 10:04 AM EST
Ann Droid wants to publish a bestseller. So she sits down with an advance copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix—the fifth book—and proceeds to transcribe. She verbatim copies all the chapter titles—from Chapter 1 (“Dudley Demented”) to Chapter 38 (“The Second War Begins”). She copies verbatim the topic sentences of each paragraph, starting from the first (highly descriptive) one and continuing, in order, to the last, simple one (“Harry nodded.”). She then paraphrases the rest of each paragraph. She rushes the competing version to press before the original under the title: Ann Droid’s Harry Potter 5.0. The knockoff flies off the shelves.

Note 1: "advance copy". These are given to proof readers, and the authors. If I remember right, they are under an agreement to not share these (aka NDA). This doesn't apply since the java code had already been fully shared.

Note 2: "rushes the competing version to press before" Which implies a minimum of breaking a contract (the NDA), or worse, criminal theft of a physical copy from another (and does happen with movies). This might also come under the "trade secrets"... of which there are none with the java language (the publishing of Java was done by Sun Microsystems well before Android was published).

Note 3: The pre-release volumes of a novel are already under copyright, and thus can be directly sued for that reason.

Such activity has already been decided - you can't publish a paraphrased novel as "new"...

In the case of software it also doesn't work - as noted elsewhere you have to first eliminate the non-copyrightable parts.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Conflating Fiction and Software
Authored by: the_flatlander on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 11:09 AM EST
There's something familiar abut the theme of conflating Copyrights in works of
fiction with Copyrights in software... it seems to me that someone else tried
something like that a while back. I guess it's been maybe a decade ago. I
wonder if anyone remembers who that was.

Clearly, if Oracle had its way, no one else could sell database software that
responded to SQL queries and commands, because, you know, they'd be copying what
Oracle's RDBMS does.

The Flatlander

The mystery is, why, with all Larry's money, can't he seem to get treatment for
his all-too-obvious megalomania?

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle to open source Java FX for Android
Authored by: DannyB on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 01:12 PM EST
Oracle will open source Android and iOS ports of Java FX.

I hope Google takes that into account in its reply.

So we have Oracle complaining that Google has an open source copy of Java, independently implemented, but at the same time Oracle supports the existing open source Java and is now extending it by opening new parts of Java that had been closed source.

---
The price of freedom is eternal litigation.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle mis-represents the truth, yet again.
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 01:38 PM EST
If Oracle were to re-phrase their submission with the truth, it would be..

GASP Google wrote their version with *GASP* the *HORROR* paper and INK.

They used Chapters and Paragraphs, and sentences oh my!

They used the Chapter Titles and Character names, but then wrote a completely
different story inside, with the same outcome.

We are now stomping our feet like the beligerent, red-headed step-children, with
our "you owe me" attitude because we did not get our way, and so we're
lying to cover that we lied the first time, though this time using a bigger
lie.

Since you cannot copyright names of characters... Potter having been used in
M*A*S*H* (Sherman T.), and Harry having been used for centuries. This
incarnation of Harry Potter is a different tail.

Someone else put together Harry and Potter, but then wrote a tail of a young
man, destined to be the finest programmer in the world, and to take out the evil
hacker Erisoly Lanir. In doing so, destroying Lanir's dreams of taking over
the world by turning all the androids into javabeans.

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Boies and Co.'s dancing shoes - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 05:54 PM EST
  • tail - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 07:53 AM EST
Functionality
Authored by: tknarr on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:00 PM EST

I think Oracle's going to lose this on the same grounds they lost in the district court. Their argument ignores one fundamental difference between writing a new novel and writing a software library: functional elements.

If I'm writing a new novel, there's no functional requirement that I use anything from the Harry Potter novels. But suppose I'm writing a study guide for an English Lit class that's going to analyze character interactions in the Harry Potter novels. I'm fairly sure that's allowable, and doesn't infringe on J.K. Rowling's copyrights. Now I do have some functional requirements imposed on me. I have to use (copy) the titles of the novels. I have to copy the chapter numbers and probably chapter titles. I have to copy the character names. If I don't, then people reading the study guide won't know what I'm referring to. In that context the things I'm "copying" are functional, not creative: they serve to identify locations in the original text and characters being referred to, they can't be written differently and still serve that function.

As for writing a paraphrase of the books, well, I'd point to the entire genre romance section of a bookstore for a counter-example. Serial romances are so bad that from the summary blurb on the back I could rattle off a fairly detailed plotline for the book including all the plot twists, because the same standard story kept showing up again and again (to the point where it was a running joke among us in college that the authors just used global search-and-replace and reissued the same book with new character and place names).

[ Reply to This | # ]

  • Functionality - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:31 PM EST
  • Functionality - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 10:50 AM EST
So ... no one is allowed to develop its own libc either?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:24 PM EST
Bois is just painting himself a complete unreasonable shady lawyer, twisting
reality and law as far as he can get. Since he already lost big deal with the
judge, there may be good chance that the appellate court clearly spots Bois
smoke and mirrors.

In the alternate Bois universe, no one would be allowed to develop, say a libc
independently. Because the libc is soooo incredible precious and its so unique
as Harry Blotter.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Does Oracle have an...
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:42 PM EST
...ardent desire to make complete asses of themselves?

With this case and the HP case they looked like clowns.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle Files Appeal Brief in Oracle v. Google ~pj
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 02:47 PM EST
Whether you like Oracle or Larry Ellison or not, Oracle has a point and they
should win, in my opinion.

This is not about Larry Ellison.
Please put emotions aside and think rationally. The argument is sound. Google
did make a 1:1 copy of the entire Java API, all interfaces and libraries.

The hundreds or thousands of career Sun developers who wrote these packages are
employed by Oracle now and are still maintaining, improving, and expanding the
very very large Java OpenJDK Project.

Sun sued Microsoft for this same reason, Microsoft copied Java.
This is not "the big bad Oracle being greedy," it is the same defense
Sun used in the past.

A company is not a person and it has no personality, it is tribal and
uncivilized to anthropomorphize them the way people do. It is an organization of
thousands of people.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Selective citation, sign of a weak case?
Authored by: dio gratia on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 03:06 PM EST

As in the incomplete citation department. Johnson Controls v. Phoenix Control Systems, 886 F.2d 1173:

Where an idea and the expression "merge," or are "inseparable," the expression is not given copyright protection. Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry Corp. v. Kalpakian, 446 F.2d 738, 742 (9th Cir.1971). In addition, where an expression is, as a practical matter, indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given idea, the expression is protected only against verbatim, or virtually identical copying. Rachel v. Banana Republic, Inc., 831 F.2d 1503, 1507 (9th Cir.1987); Frybarger, 812 F.2d at 530.
Frybarger v. IBM, 812 F. 2d 525 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 1987 which delves deeply into substantial similarity for software, leading eventually to filtration testing:
Those features of Frybarger's works that are ideas are not protected, therefore, against even directly copied identical ideas in Gebelli's works. Thus, to the extent that the similarities between Frybarger's and Gebelli's works are confined to ideas and general concepts, these similarities are noninfringing. See 3 M. Nimmer, Nimmer On Copyright § 13.03[A][1] at 13-21 (1986) ("[I]f the only similarity between plaintiff's and defendant's works is that of the abstract idea, there is an absence of substantial similarity and hence no infringement results.") (emphasis in original).

The district court concluded that the only similar features in Frybarger's and Gebelli's works are nonprotectible ideas. As for the expressive elements in the works, the district court held that no reasonable jury could find them substantially similar. After viewing Frybarger's and Gebelli's works, and the other videogames viewed by the district court, we are convinced that the district court was correct. Although there are numerous similar features in Frybarger's and Gebelli's works,[2] 530*530 we believe that each of the similar features constitutes a basic idea of the videogames and, to the extent each feature is expressive, that the expression is "`as a practical matter indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of a given [idea].'"[3] Atari, Inc. v. North American Philips Consumer Elecs. Corp., 672 F.2d 607, 616 (7th Cir.1982) (quoting Alexander v. Haley, 460 F.Supp. 40, 45 (S.D.N.Y.1978). These ideas, like all ideas, are not protected by copyright. Id. at 615; see 17 U.S.C. § 102(b); Sid & Marty Krofft, 562 F.2d at 1163; 3 Nimmer, supra, § 13.03[A][1], at 13-21. They have been left explicitly unprotected in order to encourage their individual expression in original works of authorship.

Furthermore, the mere indispensable expression of these ideas, based on the technical requirements of the videogame medium, may be protected only against virtually identical copying. Atari, 672 F.2d at 616; Sid & Marty Krofft, 562 F.2d at 1168. Indispensable expression is accorded only this slight protection because it is so close to the nonprotectible idea itself that "the expression provides nothing new or additional over the idea." Id. See also Herbert Rosenthal Jewelry Corp. v. Kalpakian, 446 F.2d 738, 742 (9th Cir.1971) ("When the `idea' and its `expression' are thus inseparable, copying the `expression' will not be barred, since protecting the `expression' in such circumstances would confer a monopoly of the `idea' upon the copyright owner."); Atari, Inc. v. Amusement World, Inc., 547 F.Supp. 222, 229 (D.Md.1981) (indispensable expressive features of videogames "are part of plaintiff's idea and are not protected by plaintiff's copyright"). Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Frybarger, we agree with the district court that no reasonable jury could conclude that the indispensable expression of these similar ideas is virtually identical in Frybarger's and Gebelli's works.

Oracle effectively wants idea-expression merger to be okay for software because it's functional, from their appeal:
The court was wrong to hold that no line of declaring code “can[] receive copyright protection” because they are “commands to carry out pre-assigned functions.” A166-67. Since all software consists of “commands to carry out pre-assigned functions,” that would mean that no software is protectable.
This strikes me as an attempt to make the smallest written expression copyright eligible despite it's functionality. A declaration effectively associates a name with it's attributes. Those attributes tend to be essential for functionality.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Federal Circuit lacks jurisdiction
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 04:00 PM EST

Gee, if someone committed murder over a patent, would the Federal Circuit have
jurisdiction?

With Justice Scalia already on record as doubting the provenance of specialty
courts, I supposed the Federal Circuit judges will try to keep justifying their
jobs.

Justice Scalia notwithstanding, this needs to be in the 9th Circuit, not the
Federal Circuit, as PJ pointed out, because this is copyright, not patents.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Could JK Rowling sue Oracle, now?
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 04:01 PM EST
Since, by literally copying the chapter titles themselves, and indicating the
sequence and arrangement of those titles, their "example" appears to
be doing
itself, what they claim should not be allowed.

However, while they want to apply this to software, what they are in fact doing

with their example is (apparently) violating "regular" copyright as
applies to
literature.

I'm not saying she'd win, but it might grab the attention of the court, and the

media, if she filed suit on this "outrage". :-)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Do not use java ... ever
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 06:31 PM EST
Java is not that great a language anyway. It is unfortunate that it is taught
extensively in schools. Oracle's implementation is so full of bugs and security
holes that it should not be run on any machine ... ever. It is the kind of mess
that happens when you originally design for security, then decide to punch the
security full of holes to make it a general purpose language. You wind up with
a Frankenstein's monster of a language that is neither a good general purpose
language, nor does it retain any security. Let them keep Java. We are better
off without it.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Truth stranger than fiction (or Oracle's Appeal)
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 06:32 PM EST
There is actually a person under the pseudonym Ann Droid who
writes fan-fiction for Harry Potter and MASH.

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/981465/Ann-Droid

[ Reply to This | # ]

OS from scratch
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 06:38 PM EST
Oracle thinks Google should have written a new OS from scratch, like Apple and
Microsoft? I was unaware Apple wrote BSD and I believe MS got DOS from someone
else.

J

[ Reply to This | # ]

Declaration != First line of paragraph
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 10:20 PM EST
Oracle compares the API declaration to the first line of a paragraph.

1. While there is no theoretical limit to the number of sentences in a
paragraph, most paragraphs would have less than ten sentences. Saying Google
copied the first line of each paragraph implyies >10% copying. That is
clearly not the case. A few APIs may be simple, but most are quite complex and
are more properly compared to a chapter of many paragraphs, or a section of many
chapters, or even a book with several sections each containing many paragraphs.

2. The first sentence of a paragraph in a novel is not functional. An API
definition is. Instructions for how to use an API could be written in prose
without any explicit use of computer language syntax. Those same instructions
could then be used to recreate the API definition, with the possible exception
of variable names (if they weren't given in the instructions). That's because
the exact form of the API declaration is dictated by the language syntax. As to
the variable names, if its ok to use the variable names from the instructions
when writing a program that uses the API (and it should), then it should be ok
to use them when writing a replacement API library.

3. A better analogy might be copy a multi-volume encyclopedia, with articles
arranged within country or topic within each volume. IANAL, but I think someone
could use the same multi-volume structure, including the organization of topics
within each volume and articles within each topic, to create a competing
encyclopedia without infringing (as long as they researched and wrote their own
articles).

I'm aghast that Oracle would make such a ludicrous analogy.

[ Reply to This | # ]

It it just me...
Authored by: JonCB on Wednesday, February 13 2013 @ 11:26 PM EST
Or is everyone else deja-vu-ing on yet again seeing an
Oracle filing that has major and fundamental factual issues
in the first substantive paragraph.

The district ruling (and from memory it was very very
explicit about this) was that it was not protected by
copyright because you CANNOT integrate with Java unless you
get those headers exactly right.

Not... you have to work a little harder if you don't get
them right.
Not... you have to promote it a little better if you don't
get them right.

It just flat won't work.

Trying to argue that it's impossible to sell books to pre-
teens unless you copy Harry Potter is nonsensical and
obviously wrong. I can understand that they want to put
forward the impression that if the same case had gotten the
same treatment it would have wrongfully been exhonerated but
can they at least spend enough time on the metaphor that it
doesn't sound like absolute horse puckey.

I mean is that really too much to ask?

[ Reply to This | # ]

C++
Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 12:54 AM EST
So should we talk about how java "copies" C++?

I mean, what's with this ripping off of the keywords: class, interface, int,
float, long, for, if, while, etc etc etc. They even do pretty much the same
things for crying out loud.

Maybe Bjarne Stroustrup should sue Oracle.

Oracle needs a new name. Or Acking? Or Unable? Poor Unable?

At any rate, Oracle fails at logic

[ Reply to This | # ]

So Oracle seems to think they get a second shot....
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 07:54 AM EST
Here is Oracles rationale: The Android market is so huge
that they will continue to exploit every possible "legal"
option even if all they get out of it are some pennys on the
Dollar per Android.

Basically the case is clear and always has been clear: You
can't actually copyright software. Subject matter of
copyright: 17 USC § 102 (b). If you want that kind of hard
protection for software then you have to apply for a patent.
Thats it in a nutshell. Judge Alsup also referred to this
basic principle an number of times.

Copyright law, as it applys to software, has some badly
broken parts that need to be fixed, so possibly this case is
on its long road to the SCOTUS.

What is very irritating is that one can get copyright for
computer programs without being forced to publically
disclose all of the subject matter, this is just a wrong and
very unbalanced regulation, especially as it applys to
software.

If it would be mandatory to fully publically disclose the
subject matter of the computer program then peer review of
such subject matter would become instantly possible and we
would see drastically less copyrighted computer software as
a result, because much has been and still is being copyied
undercover by the established industry. There would be a
fundamental shift in tone if all of that were publically
exposed.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Package names, method names, not creative
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 11:52 AM EST
In regards to
"Much of the creativity lies in determining what to include in the packages
and how to organize the declaring code in a way that programmers using the
packages in their own apps will find appealing and intuitive. The process
usually begins as a “high level exercise.” "

Having written a few hundred packages and coached others in how to do so, there
is not a lot of creativity in this process. The principles behind package names
and organization is based on the idea that you want others to be able to refer
to these names, and not make it difficult to determine if you are talking about
Fred or George.

As far as names go, for example,the name of a method that logs an error is going
to be something like 'WriteError', 'LogError', 'RecordException',etc and not
one of Snape, Dumbledore or Harry; that would be confusing and counter to the
purpose of making the package easy to use.

As far as organization goes, you will start out with a lot of simple things that
then end up being coalesced into more complex things as the programmer/developer
realizes that he never does A without doing B or that he need to perform B
before running C. He then recognizes that he needs to apply a descriptive name
for the collective function performed by A,B, C, packages tend to coalesce
toward a common structure.

It really ends up producing something where the organization matches something
else produced independently given that both were solving the same problem.
Coming up with an original idea is different than being the first one to do
something.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Are Oracle's lawyers fools or knaves?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 03:20 PM EST
The whole software industry relies on the settled principle that APIs are
not copyrightable. Oracle's legal staff would have to be absolute idiots to
not know this. I don't think they believe their own argument for a
second.

In plain terms, they are lying. More accurately, they are distorting the
truth in a manner reminscent of a teenager's excuse as to why they were
out all night. I am reminded of Apple's childish non-apology in the
Samsung UK trial. IIRC, the judge castgated Apple's behavior as
"puerile".
I think that sums up much of US trial law, which often resembles nothing
so much as trash-talking between spoiled adolescents. It is refreshing
when judges like Richard Posner occasionally lay down some adult
supervision.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Oracle Files Appeal Brief in Oracle v. Google ~pj Updated 3Xs
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, February 14 2013 @ 09:46 PM EST
OMG! Groklaw just infringed Oracle's attornies' copyrights by copying its entire
brief in full! Here comes the next suit: Oracle v. Groklaw.

[ Reply to This | # ]

They just don't get it
Authored by: mattflaschen on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 02:10 AM EST
I would expect some technical errors, since I know lawyers are writing this. But I also know they must have spent significant time consulting with technical experts. They also go into more technical detail than they have to. Given that, it's striking just how many technical errors there are. Just a small sampling:
  1. "The similar code that the programmer declares in order to invoke the prewritten program is: URL(String spec).openConnection()." The syntax is completely wrong.
  2. "It can describe a trivial communication protocol to pass information between programs." I'm not sure what they mean by this, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong. Generally speaking, an API is how a program talks to other programs. For some simple cases, that's trivial, but in general it's not. They could be referring to a wire protocol like the IIOP. These both sit at a different level from the library methods programmers actually call. But they're far from trivial. Maybe Google should call Oracle's bluff and say, "Yes, APIs are often trivial, and we only copied the trivial part."
  3. "Or it can describe sophisticated computer programs, like the ones Sun wrote." That's not an API, it's an implementation.
  4. They confuse a declaration with a method invocation.
  5. This isn't even a technical error, but a legal one: "It is called an “open source” license, not because it is open for all to use unconditionally, but because the licensee must expose his innovations publicly." No open source license, not even copyleft ones, require you to expose your work publicly. If you only use the modified GPL code internally (never distribute binary or source), you don't have distribute source code. Moreover, open source does not mean (or require) copyleft. Copyleft is one kind of open source, not what "open" means in the phrase.
  6. In support of their absurd Harry Potter analogy, they write "Google’s programmers admit that they and Noser pored over the Specification as they did their paraphrasing.". But paraphrasing the Specification would just get you another Specification, not an implementation.
If the appeals court is smart, they'll defer to the judgment of someone who has legal expertise, and can program. The best legal arguments Google has on its side are:
  1. Lotus v. Borland. Oracle's dismissal of it was not convincing.
  2. Fair use. If Google does lose on copyrightability, they can still win on fair use for similar reasons (functional requirements for compatibility).

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  • Open Source - Authored by: Wol on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 06:08 PM EST
Oracle Files Appeal Brief in Oracle v. Google ~pj Updated 3Xs
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, February 15 2013 @ 11:22 AM EST
> Moreover, Google’s copying was not about interoperability.
Interoperability means that programs written for Android
would run on the Java platform and vice versa. Google
wanted the opposite: to copy enough code to make Android
familiar enough to “[l]everage” the millions of Java
programmers who knew Oracle’s packages, A2033, but not copy
all the code that would be required for interoperability


I can see a judge going: "So... you are saying... Google
violated your copyrights because... it did not copy ENOUGH
code?"

__
magicmulder

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  • Redefining terms - Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 01:34 PM EST
28 attorneys, lame idea
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, February 16 2013 @ 06:45 PM EST
Twenty eight attorneys and the best argument they can come up with is that
Google copied java like someone paraphrasing Harry Porter.

Umm, Oracle is trying to protect starting a murder mystery with "It was a
dark and stormy night..." ending with someone did in this room using this
weapon.

Umm, get a clue that the Harry Potter analogy is very lame and that Oracle is
trying to protect something far less specific.

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James Potter and the Hall of Crossing Elder or whatever.
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, February 17 2013 @ 06:13 PM EST
If they want to play a stupid game like that then Google should come back with
the James Potter series created by Lippert(?) which started with James Potter
and the Hall of Crossing Elder ( or whatever it is ).

Then they should point out that instead of drawing childish analogies with
literature that are on the tenuous side, they should argue the merits of the
case.

MouseTheLuckyDog

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Google - Win the legal case - Lose the 'Don't be evil' title
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 18 2013 @ 09:59 PM EST
I don't expect Oracle to win this case.

But let's call a spade a spade.

Google realistically did not just did not just clone the
public API.

Google had the Sun (Oracle) source code for the underlying
implementation right in front of them as well to
base/compare large chunks of their implementation.
If you think Google did not leverage the Sun source as a
reference to come up with their own implementation, you
would be extremely naive.

I wonder if Google were a Chinese company whether the
American people would feel so strongly that Google has done
nothing wrong. Maybe they have committed nothing 'illegal',
but in my opinion they have crossed the ethical and 'don't
be evil' bounds. But that's life I guess.

I think what many people in the IT community love is the
fact that it is Oracle getting burned at their own game for
once. Google is very very smart here. What they are doing
is essentially setting themselves up for vendor lock-in.
Google app-engine and the like are running bastardized
versions of Python and Java. It is only a matter of time
before Android makes it way to App Engine, then to server
products etc. Then the chrome browser will be able to run
android apps etc etc. Android then becomes the de-facto
standard, and Java becomes less and less relevant.

[ Reply to This | # ]

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