In the long-running litigation (and hey, is there any litigation
that isn't "long-running"?) between Oracle
and Google, a US court decided in 2012 that APIs in this case
were not eligible for copyright protection.
See our earlier post. This meant a complete loss for Oracle in
its lawsuit against Google for infringement of the Java APIs used
in Google's Android software.
Copyright protects only original expression. Applied to
software code (including API protocols), the law of copyright tells
us that certain elements are not protectable by copyright since
they lack originality. The US trial level decision in Oracle
vs. Google has been appealed and the parties are now filing briefs
in the US Federal Court of Appeals (a copy of Oracle's brief is
here). The briefs make fascinating reading for
those interested in the finer points of copyright law and the
history of the Java programming.
