[colug-432] copyright ...an API?

[Jeff Frontz]

On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 7:41 PM, Roberto C. Sánchez <roberto at connexer.com>
wrote:

> Except that by that logic, it would be illegal for me to develop, for
> example, a valve cover gasket for GM trucks and then sell it (assuming
> the design was not some publically available licensed design).
>

IANAL and this is not legal advice, but... It would seem to be more like
you developed said gasket and then called it exactly whatever GM called it
(down to the part number), printed an installation manual for it that was
verbatim the copyright'd GM manual, packaged it in a box printed with the
same GM-copyright'd instructions as were on the GM box, included a part
drawing that was identical to the copyright'd GM part drawing, and included
preventative-maintenance instructions that were verbatim the copyright'd GM
maintenance instructions for their part.

The issue appears not to be that Google used the API or even (as I'd
mistakenly thought) that they implemented the API; it appears to be that
they copied all of the header files verbatim (some 7000 lines of code).  To
the casual observer (say, a Federal judge), that sounds an awful lot like a
copyright violation.  See
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/13-1021.Opinion.5-7-2014.1.PDF

I would bet that Google just has to go back and do what the Appeals Court
says ("Second..." at the bottom of page 36 and the point on pages 44-45)
that they failed to do:  assert/prove that the [use of the] API(s) is so
commonplace that there can be no other way to express it (than the
well-known names of the classes, members, etc.).

It looks like they also need to go and remove the bullet from their foot
(page 50-51), where they said that they weren't trying to implement a JVM
but wanted instead to use the API for some another purpose -- implementing
Android (and thus confusing the court as to why the API was more general
than the JVM -- that the API is more like part of the Java language than it
is part of a JVM or Android).

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Jeff

P.S.  I wonder if this explains why the variable names of the parameters
(and implementation hierarchy of implicitly included files) used in the
same functions that are part of sections 2/3 of Unix/Linux vary all over
the place in the header files and man pages across different Unix API
implementations.  AT&T/Bell Labs had one way, UCB had another, Sun had
another, IEEE/POSIX had another, Linus had another, ...  Maybe if Google
had done a bit of rewrite of the header files (e.g., use different
parameter names, change up the order that member functions appear in the
class definitions, etc.), there wouldn't have been an argument to be made?
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