Android Is 'Fair Use' As Google Beats Oracle In $9 Billion Lawsuit (arstechnica.com) 243
infernalC writes: Ars Technica is reporting that the verdict is in, and that the jury decided that Google's duplication of several Java interfaces is fair use. Ars Technica writes that Google's Android OS does not infringe upon Oracle-owned copyrights because its re-implementation of 37 Java APIs is protected by "fair use." The jury unanimously answered "yes" in response to whether or not Google's use of Java APIs was a "fair use" under copyright law. The trial is now over, since Google won. "Google's win somewhat softens the blow to software developers who previously thought programming language APIs were free to use," Ars Technica writes. "It's still the case that APIs can be protected by copyright under the law of at least one appeals court. However, the first high-profile attempt to control APIs with copyright law has now been stymied by a "fair use" defense." The amount Oracle may have asked for in damages could have been as much as $9 billion.
Thank Jesus... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes, juries do the right/sane thing.
Now PLEASE, supreme court, et al, don't let this warm feeling go away by overturning this.
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Sometimes, juries do the right/sane thing
And equally, Oracle did the wrong thing as judged by their peers.
Re:Thank Jesus... (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry Ellison is a selfish hypocritical right wing fuck who was willing to wreck the entire software industry for his own personal gain.
Re:The lawsuit was a PR stunt gone well for Oracle (Score:5, Interesting)
You obviously haven't heard from anybody who's worked for Oracle. Yes, he really is that greedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"The lawnmower has no empathy. The lawnmower can't have empathy."
And then there's the part where basically the entire team of Sun technical people quit en masse after the acquisition.
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Oracle has to defend its business and it would be stupid for them not to go after the ginormous megacorp Google if they didn't see a chance of making a PR splash with the public and the shareholders.
I suggest you watch this extremely insightful BBC documentary called "F**k You Buddy" [vimeo.com]. It largely explains how the above type of viewpoint gained ascendance in certain circles. The short answer: much of our current economic ideology is based on the game theory work of paranoid schizophrenic John Nash. The implication of Nash's work can be described in the "Prisoner's Dilemma", where cooperation is negative, and the only way to reliably win is to betray your neighbour. Nash's ideology puts forward a hyp
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If The Donald wins, we are safe.
Really? The tech industry sure doesn't see it that way [latimes.com].
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If The Donald wins, we are safe.
lol. Hard to imagine that being the case in any context.
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I suspect Donald understands real property very, very well. Intellectual property? Maybe insofar as licensing his name is concerned. He doesn't know an API from an IPA.
He understands real property exceedingly well, supporting the Kelo decision, which ruled taking a house and giving the land to another private person who will pay more taxes on it, to a government insatiable for cash, is a "public use".
Even many on the left, who supported it initially for that reason, no longer do once it was pointed out this massively targets poor people, leaving them worse off.
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Re:Thank Jesus... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, one court circuit has created the precedent that APIs are copyrightable. That's not to say that same judgement applies in any other by default, you could still press the argument in another court (albeit with an uphill battle) that APIs can't be copyrighted.
Yes but as the GP pointed out, you can only even attempt to overturn that precedent if you have significant resources to fund a legal team to try to do it.
Two contradictory decisions can occur simultaneously in different circuits, it's how many of the social issues SCOTUS has dealt with lately have come to them. And that's probably where it would lead, to the Supreme Court, who would rule once and for all.
Well in this case one court ruled that APIs cannot be copyrighted, that judgement was overturned and the case was returned to that court with the ruling that APIs can indeed be copyrighted. The case proceeded on that basis and the argument was then "fair use". As it stands, the precedent in both circuits is that APIs can be copyrighted.
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I would imagine that one fair use ruling would make it easier for others to argue fair use in their situations as well, provided they copy only the interfaces and not the implementations.
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If a small, open source project (read: hobby project), for example, gets a DCMA due to copyright
How does a small, open-source project get a Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
Under which statutory category, which criteria (Score:2)
Under which of the categories of fair use specified in the statute do you believe this use falls? Which of the statutory four criteria for how it is used apply, in opinion?
Let me guess, you had no idea that the statute lays out categories of use which are fair, and the conditions under which use within those categories may be fair. You couldn't guess what two of the categories are, much less articulate any cogent thoughts about how any of them applies to this case.
Rather, you're under the delusion that the
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Sounds more like describing the typical executive.
Rather, you're under the delusion that the law is whatever you wish it to be at the moment. This is not surprising, for two reasons. First, given that people with social deficiencies such as you have displayed tend also be be ignorant, to lack knowledge of the world around them. Second, the same ultra-selfcenteredness which allows you to think as though your desire for the law to be a certain way actually does make it so; this also makes it extremely difficult for such a person to converse in a civilized and respectful manner.
Steve Jobs' ears must be burning.
Oracle Company Motto (Score:3, Funny)
I think Oracle needs to change to a new company motto, like "Don't Be Evil!".
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More to the point, Uncle Larry should change himself to "Don't Be Evil".
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One
Raving
Asshole
Called
Larry
Ellison
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I think Oracle needs to change to a new company motto, like "Don't Be Evil!".
Needs to be adapted for Oracle: "Don't be a Scum Sucking Slimeball".
The trial is now over, (Score:5, Informative)
The trial is now over,
Oracle has threatened to appeal (because of the way the instructions to the jury were phrased), and in fact has filed a motion for JOML, which would overturn the jury's decision (basically they asked the judge to evaluate the evidence and determine whether a non-descript 'reasonable' jury would find it fair use).
So expect this to last for the rest of the year at least.
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... non-descript 'reasonable' jury ...
A company owned by Larry Ellison wants to use the word "reasonable"?
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Re:The trial is now over, (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a no true scottsman, straight up!
It begs the question, that if the jury finds against Oracle, the jury is defacto unreasonable!
Why even HAVE a jury?!
No, the assertion is a logical fallacy, and a classic one at that. Oracle needs to define, explicitly, why it feels the instructions to the jury that has already decided the fact of the case that has now concluded were in any way improper.
That it cannot find one, and has to resort to "But, the verdict is unreasonable! I demand the other verdict!" as its justification, indicates that oracle does not have grounds for appeal.
Logical fallacies of international renown like this do not belong in the decision matrix of the legal system. Period.
Re:The trial is now over, (Score:5, Informative)
That's a no true scottsman, straight up!
It sounds like it to you, but in court there are legal definitions for things like "reasonable jury" and Oracle will need to prove that their case fits that definition.
Re:The trial is now over, (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Nolo, it means exactly what I think it means.
http://www.nolo.com/dictionary... [nolo.com]
In the context of a "reasonable jury", it would relate to a jury that is ordinary, rational, or appropriate.
The no true scottsman appellation stands: Oracle is straight up saying that a jury that fails to see things its way is not an ordinary, rational, or appropriate jury.
The assertion that there is a specific meaning to the phrase "reasonable jury" outside of this more generic use of the legal definition of the word "reasonable" does not seem to bear fruit. I have searched many different online legal dictionaries for the term, and come up empty. If there is such a specific use of the art, I would be glad to have it defined for me.
As best I can interpret, Oracle is stating that because Google's use is clearly commercial in nature, that the use cannot be a fair use, and takes this as a presupposition for its subsequent intent in the statement-- that no reasonable jury (as in, one that is aware of what constitutes fair use, and uses reason) would conclude that Google's use falls under that category.
It is a no true scottsman, because of this presupposition-- It begs the question.
To counter this line of argument that Oracle is employing, let us instead consider what an API is, and what role it plays in communication.
An API is a specification. Essentially, it is a codified set of definitions for terms, and methods of employment that are permitted within a system of communication. It is roughly analogous to a lexicon for a given written or verbal language.
EG-- a dictionary.
With this in mind, we can point out the fallacy of Oracle's statement, by replacing a few words.
"No reasonable jury could find that Googleâ(TM)s verbatim and entirely commercial use of the dictionary and stated grammar to compete against our written works was a fair use."
Basically, Oracle is presupposing that it owns a language, so any use of that language's lexicon and grammar is theirs to control-- and assert that they get this power through copyright.
Copyright provides restrictions on reproduction and use of fixed media (be it written words, moving pictures, photographs, or audio recordings--)-- it does not cover subject matter. EG, if I paint a nice still-life of some daisies, I don't get to claim ownership over the concept of painting still lifes of daisies. Only over the reproduction of my specific image of daisies.
The court demonstrated that the API documents created by Oracle can be copyrighted-- They can control the dissemination and distribution of those documents, and only those documents. They do not hold any authority over the concepts expressed in the documents. EG-- they don't own the rights to all pictures of daisies-- even if they invented daisies.
One could claim that the VM Google uses (whatever it is called these days) is a derivative work of the Java virtual machine. This is a tricky area legally-- Copyright is not the appropriate vehicle for this kind of intellectual property. (Patents are the appropriate vehicle.) The API documents describe the language and behavior used by the java virtual machine. Google has created a different virtual machine that uses the same language.
At best, the case Oracle can make here is that google copied, verbatim, their dictionary instead of writing their own. The problem, as demonstrated in court, is that there can only be one definition, and the definition given is absolutely precise, as required for a computer language. There are no other ways to rephrase or rewrite the dictionary to make it into a new literary work referencing the same language.
Again, the copyright is over the documents, not the language.
This is why the jury found the use to be a non-infringing, fair use.
An outcome that Oracle insists cannot happen, because "reasons", and that any jury that finds otherwise is not reasonable-- Nevermind that the way they reached the verdict was through application of reason and fairness.
No True Scottsman confirmed.
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I didn't think anyone who knew the first thing about the law was allowed to post here.
And we are all thankful for it!
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I'm pretty sure they'll have a problem with that one seeing as both parties had to agree the text of the jury instructions
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Well - in England at least we don't really use juries in civil claims - it's theoretically possible, but it never really happens in practice.
We do have jury trials for (serious) criminal cases.
It's still a nice victory (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oracle now has an uphill fight on their hands.
Indeed.
The Judge generally weighs the jury's ruling pretty strongly. I honestly thought the jury would rule against google
Here are the instructions that were given to the jury [scribd.com]. They are dense and difficult to understand; it would have taken me a day or so to really get a good understanding of them and how they apply to the case. I don't think the jurors tried to understand them, given how quickly they finished.
My guess is the jurors opened the source code to Android, saw how big it is, then opened the source code to the Java APIs, saw it was very small in comparison, and said, "ok, it's so small that it's surely fai
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IANAL, but the jury instructions seem pretty reasonable to me. The instructions are pretty long, but they seem to be written very clearly and have a minimum of jargon (legal or technical).
Maybe.....but there are plenty of crucial details that matter. For example, you read it; did you notice which of the four fair-use categories is most important? How much in favor of Google (at most) should the third fair-use category be weighted? These are details that could completely change a judgement, but they are subtle and hard to understand from the argument.
Here's another example (and this is one that Oracle already complained about). Read this sentence from the instructions to the jury: "Sun deve
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Judges used to routinely overrule juries but the Supreme court mostly stopped this a few years ago. Current Supreme court precedent on this is that the Juries ruling is sacrosanct. About the only appeal Oracle can make at this point that has any chance is that the Jury instructions were wrong. They've announced plans for this appeal already but it's a major uphill battle on that, especially if they didn't challenge the instructions originally.
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You've been using Java too much [github.com]. I think you mean JMOL [wikipedia.org].
:-D
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Knowing Alsup, he won't buy that one.
I don't think he will either. You are right, there's basically zero reason for him to overturn the jury now; even if he thought Oracle were correct, might as well let the appeal court do the dirty work.
I'm sure they will appeal, but it seems like a slim chance at this point.
Maybe. I don't know which court will hear the appeal, but if it goes to the same federal appeals court that the original question went to, then I think they will rule that it's not fair use. They almost did to begin with. In their earlier decision they wrote, "Oracle’s position is not without force. O
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Which is why it might be a good thing if this ends up in the Supreme Court's hands, because at that point, the argument that an API is open to fair use would gain precedence, and that would be the end of trying to copyright what amounts to a code "phone book".
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The appeals court has been handing down some pretty messed up intellectual property decisions in the last decade, but fortunately, the Supreme Court hammered them back in a bit in the last few decisions, like in the Alice case most recently. Hopefully, they got the message.
Too Bad For Oracle... (Score:2)
Re:Too Bad For Oracle... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is bad for Oracle. They don't need the $9B but they need a club that big to force Google into cross-licensing deals on their distributed database patents. Because Oracle doesn't scale without them.
Otherwise they didn't need to spend $5.6B on Sun.
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Not Over till the last appeal is resolved (Score:2)
In court it's not over until all the appeals are exhausted. Oracle will appeal this.
Rubbish! (Score:4, Funny)
I bet Google made a secret deal with the judge to expunge his entire search history.
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His search history is now Serious Legal Stuff, baseball and some cat videos.
11,500 lines of code (Score:3, Interesting)
11,500 lines of code (Score:5, Insightful)
I copied 1 line of subjects. It's undisputed. I took your subject, I copied it, and put it right into my post.
Re:11,500 lines of code (Score:5, Insightful)
For "code", read "lines from header files to ensure that their strlen() function - or whatever - took the same parameters in the same order as our one, when they were trying to make an independent, but compatible, reimplementation".
It's like Intel saying "They copied our circuit diagram, hundreds of pins on a layout and what they do" when someone's making, say, a chip compatible with an x86 motherboard. Nobody's suggesting that the chip they made wasn't developed entirely independently, they're saying they "own" the fact that pin 1 is 5v, pin 2 is GND, pin 3 is DATA1, etc.
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Hardware is very different and only useful as an analogy, especially when it comes to patents.
There are a vast number of pin-compatible chips that are not licensed, nor do they need to be. And in Google v Oracle, it was already established that such reimplementation was allowed, it was just a question of whether that was "fair use" of the copyrights (and even the argument that they are subject to copyright at all was tenuous). But if you were to say "our chip pinout is copyright", that only protects that
Re:11,500 lines of code (Score:5, Informative)
It's not code (as in executable code), they are interface classes - declarations if you will - which implement no functionality at all but only specify how to interact with a subsystem.
Oracle is engaging in hyperbole.
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For the purposes of copyright it surely doesn't matter whether it's "executable code" or not - the question is whether copyright subsists in it and whether it was copied.
I haven't followed this case closely, but as I understand it the ruling is that the copyright subsists in the relevant code and it was copied, but that copying is not a copyright infringement because it falls under the "fair use" exemption.
Good result for now (Score:2)
I'm sure there will be appeals and Oracle will keep pushing the issue, but for now, it's a good thing. Frankly, it'll keep people using Java for longer, which helps Oracle a bit. Of course, Oracle and IBM are just fine locking people into insanely expensive middleware platforms too.
Personally. I'd more than like to see Java fade into maturity. It's clunky, verbose and many of the frameworks they use are showing their age. Of course, I'm biased having done recent work in C#. I've just gotten very used to it'
Stop using Java (Score:5, Insightful)
After this, if I still had my company, I wouldn't touch Java with a ten foot pole. I'd be at the whim of whatever Oracle executive failed to meet last quarter figures. Find a true unencumbered language and use that instead.
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Re:Stop using Java (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're saying: "keep taking it up the ass because I can't imagine changing my tool chain?"
There are plenty of alternatives to Java, .Net is a valid one despite your claim, and others like Python or C/C++ are equally valid. The trick with C/C++ is to use an abstraction layer between your code and the operating system. Like GUI toolkits and such. Let the GUI toolkit implement the different back-ends, your code calls it the same on all platforms.
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The only comparable platform to Java is .NET and if your goal is to avoid money hungry patent/copyright-abusing companies, switching from Java (which has been open source for years) to .NET (partly open source for, what, one year?) is not really a great trade.
And no, dynamically typed languages are not replacements, nor are C/C++. To be a Java competitor you need to match its feature set, which is very hard given how large it is. And you need to be both garbage collected/statically typed. Only Go is even in
Re: Stop using Java (Score:2)
Is this why all the cool Millennials are now pushing NPM, Node.js? :-P *facepalm*
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Um... C?
Also, Java is not cross platform. To run Java you need to first install a JVM written in, you guessed it: C.
Your professors were wrong. Very wrong.
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How about Django, PHP, Ruby, Python, Wordpress, ASP, etc? Oracle has now demonstrated that Java is a toxic brand: they will try to extract money out of you by force if you use it. For existing projects you may have little choice to stick with Java for the time being. For new projects however you'd be a fool to trust the devil.
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Nobody uses Python? Really? [python.org]
I think you were blinded before even trying Python and therefore did not "get how it works."
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C doesn't have quotes around it.
Java is kill. Once the APIs were found to be copyrightable, that was the case. Going forward, no API is totally trustworthy unless it is public domain or copy left or something. In practice, this means you have to choose APIs where you believe there's no possibly way of the prior idiotic technically incompetent ruling destroying all your work. But one thing you know for sure: anything Oracle owns is fucking poison.
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C++, maybe you've heard of it?
Heck nowadays even C# is freer than Java and that is saying something.
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Java via OpenJDK has been GPL+linking exception for years. So I guess by 'more free' you mean a slightly different open source license.
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Pay attention, the implementation is free, not the language itself. Java has no ECMA specification, hence the lawsuit.
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C++, D, Python, Julia, Go, to name just a few.
But C# is also a choice; unlike Java, it has an open standard. And it's also more "cross platform" than Java.
Web services in an offline app? Heh (Score:2)
I'd only use Java for Android and would stick with native Objective C for iOS, and keep as much of the logic in JSON RESTful webservices as I could get away with.
You won't be able to "get away with" much if an app needs to run offline, such as if it's for tablets that drift out of Wi-Fi often, phones whose data plan has been used up for the month, and devices carried on airplanes. You'll have to replicate most of the logic in an app that accesses a cached view of the data retrieved from your "JSON RESTful webservices".
Excellent...now do it again... (Score:2)
That's awesome.
Now they just have to deal with Oracle spending out the ass on followup lawsuits on this to increase everyone's financial burden on this.
Not out of the woods (Score:5, Insightful)
It's great Google won and all, but fair use doesn't really protect the average developer. Fair use is an affirmative defense. In order to assert fair use, you have to get sued, refuse to settle, and then prove that your use is a fair use in a court of law. That will almost always get prohibitively expensive very quickly as this case has shown.
The real solutions is to make APIs not covered by copyright at all, like a directory listing or mathematical formula. I think Oracle should be able to copyright the implementation of Java, and obviously they have the right to restrict the use of the Java trademark, but the APIs should just be public domain.
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Agreed. The copyright decision by the appeals court was just horrible, and as the article suggestions, this only softens the blow, but the big elephant is still in the room.
I think a better example would be a different sized tire. Other manufacturers can also make replacement tires of the same size. Or a radiator. It would be like Honda suing a generic manufacturer for making a radiator that fit the connections in a Honda. You don't have exclusive use for the size and shape of the connections.
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That would be ideal. But a close second is if all developers refuse to use APIs unless the copyright owner releases them under some sort of open license guaranteeing you won't be sued for just using the API.
Oracle's shenanigans have gone a long way towards guaranteeing that will happen. Before if you advocated the company use open source software libraries, the legal department would po
Be careful what you say (Score:2)
According to Bloomberg [bloomberg.com],
Oracle Co-Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz invoked the Ten Commandments to characterize Google as acting above the law. Catz told jurors that, at a bat mitzvah in 2012, Google General Counsel Kent Walker told her, “You know, Safra, Google is this really special company, and the old rules don’t apply to us.”
“I immediately said, ‘Thou shalt not steal,’” Catz testified. “It’s an oldie but goodie.”
Wow. If that's true, then Kent Walker should learn to not say things like that - even in a non-business setting.
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It wouldn't surprise me if .NET phases out JAVA (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM PC BIOS (Score:3)
I'd love to see IBM take a swing at this one, seeing as the original decision that allowed non-IBM PC-compatible machines to be created turned on the question of whether creating a BIOS that exposed the exact same interface as IBM's BIOS infringed on IBM's copyright if all other code could be proven to be entirely original. Under this decision the answer would be "Yes.", and IBM would be owed damages for every single PC created using a non-IBM BIOS that had any trace of the legacy BIOS API in it (at a minimum every BIOS that wasn't completely UEFI-only).
It might also be entertaining to analyze the effects of this ruling on Oracle's use of GPL- and LGPL-licensed glibc and kernel header files in their products that run on Linux. Neither license quite directly addresses the question of copying copyrighted API declarations into object files and executables. They address linking of various sorts, and copying into source code, but this particular aspect's deemed outside the scope of the license and thus not addressed.
Cracker Jack (Score:2)
I love these stories. It's like opening a box of Cracker Jack and finding a free random number in the bottom. It's never prime, however. It's always of the form p * q * r * s.
For $9bln, I wonder if Oracle did simulated trials (Score:2)
...in-house, hiring a mock jury of people from the street to sit and listen, with a good defense lawyer to mock-represent the Google side.
Then repeating over and over until juries are more often than not swayed in Oracle's favor, then with such sharpened arguments going for the real thing.
Kind of like how NASA went to the moon, except without any nobility in the endeavor.
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You are right. The interesting issues were never tested, and now Oracle has corrected that. See, there's a purpose for every insect in the woods, even the roaches.
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I don't think it means that. Google didn't just use the Java API: they re-implemented it. That is, they copied the definitions of the classes/functions/constants/etc. and then wrote new code to perform the actions for those definitions. For example, java.lang.String.valueOf() is a function that converts a value (e.g. a number) into a string. They copied the signature of the function, and then wrote new code to do the actual conversion.
Creating new implementations of existing API's happens pretty frequen
Re:Glad they won.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the reason Apache Harmony existed was as a credible "plan B" if Sun / Oracle started being dicks about open sourcing Java or excluding Apache from technology compatibility testing. When the OpenJDK became a thing, IBM switched to that, and Harmony basically fell by the wayside. But the implemented APIs found its way into Android.
And it wasn't the only implementation of the java.* APIs either. GNU Classpath was another one. And Kaffe had an implementation (albeit of an older Java). And in commercial-land there is Skelmir's CEE-J which was another impl that's still going. I had experience using CEE-J for set top box development and it was a delight especially since the "official" alternative was J2ME which sucked balls. But of course none of these efforts would have been worth suing for billions.
Google's "crime" was implementing an API (something which happens customarily all the time in computing) and having enough money to be worth suing. Fortunately they didn't take kindly to the shakedown and fought it out. Whatever you think of Google, this outcome is beneficial for everyone.
Re: Glad they won.... (Score:3)
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That and that alone is why copyright cases invariably raise the spectre of SCO. The case that just would not die. Rumor had it that a Blade IV movie would have had Blade going after the ultimate Undead Creature of all time: SCO.
Re: Glad they won.... (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot needs to eat crow (Score:5, Interesting)
well, don't know anything about the jury, but the judge I reckon has really earned respect from communities like this because to better understand the situation, he got quite familiar with Java itself: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/... [oreilly.com]
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tangentially interesting because when you're a juror you're instructed to do absolutely no research on your own. I'm in favor of well-informed judges though.
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I guess the only rejoinder to that is making sure the information juries are reviewing is neutral in nature, and in a case like this, that might be harder to obtain.
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It would appear that the judge and jury are owed an apology.
Are you sure it wasn't a case of the lawyer for Google translating the case into a metaphor that the jury could understand, like putting too much air into a balloon?
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Hold on, where is the link to pledge allegiance to the superbrain?
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Google won the battle but lost the war.
They win the war when they get Android off of Java. Then Oracle loses.
All their Java alternatives are not just the idle tinkering of a corp with too much money. I strongly suspect that after living with Java so long, they've learned to hate it with a depth of hatred similar to my hatred Verilog. They would love to be free of Java APIs and have the world use an API of their own creation. Is java2go or java2dart a thing?
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Answering my own question:
https://github.com/kevoree/jav... [github.com]
http://sma.github.io/stuff/jav... [github.io]
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A jury case can set precedent -- in a particular set of circumstances, the court case went a certain way. In future cases lawyers may reference this case when explaining how their side should win. See https://simple.wikipedia.org/w... [wikipedia.org]. It may not be 'binding' and the details will determine how easy it is to equate future cases with this one, but it still goes into the legal record and you can be sure it'll be referenced if it is helpful to someones case.
The fair use argument is clear (Score:5, Informative)
1. Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
Google's use of the Java interfaces is to educate other pieces of code about what the implementation does. Interfaces are essentially documentative in nature, not creative...
2. Nature of the copyrighted work
Interfaces are not very creative. All they really do is document the input and output of an implementation. The implementation is where the creativity of the work is expressed.
3. Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
I bet the interfaces are less than 3% of the code base. If not, we have an over-architected language on our hands here..
4. Effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work
Oracle didn't lose a dime over this until they started paying lawyers to sue Google. If anything, Google's use of the Java interfaces made Java more valuable, because it brought more developers into the Java fold.
This comment shamelessly copies content from http://www.copyright.gov/fair-... [copyright.gov]
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I bet the interfaces are less than 3% of the code base. If not, we have an over-architected language on our hands here..
Well, we are talking about Java here...
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