EU's top court: APIs can't be copyrighted

I wonder How the Google/Oracle thing will end up playing out , in light of this.

Seems to me this would completely insulate reverse-engineering from all problems.

I predict that the court will find that APIs can, in fact, be copyrighted, and that this will be appealed to the Supreme Court, which will uphold the verdict, despite the EU ruling to the contrary. This will touch off a huge avalanche of lawsuits, such as AT&T suing everyone who's made a C compiler. All serious software development in the US will grind to a halt, and lots of companies will pull out of the US. This will pretty quickly cause the US economy to collapse, making the Great Depression look like a small dip. The country will then break apart, with the west coast seceding from the rest of the country, and creating a new country with a strong technology industry and a constitution that specifies that APIs cannot be protected by copyright. Meanwhile, the rest of the former US will quickly resemble Somalia.

@Khamul: Hah, we can only hope :D

The judge in Oracle v. Google has given every indication that he is inclined to hold APIs not copyrightable.

The judge in the Oracle vs. Google case did ask them several questions regarding APIs and the EU court decision.

Yes, as a judge (if I were one), a major reason to have the parties reference the EU decision is to try to be harmonious with it in your rulings... That's a good thing for Google/Android.

@JaseP: It would be a good thing for Google/Android if they were harmonious with the EU ruling, however, it would be a bad thing for the USA, and probably unworkable. After all, the USA has a severe case of NIH and can't ever copy something done successfully first by another country (or group of countries). We either have to do nothing, do the complete opposite, or do something initially similar but several orders of magnitude more complex and expensive.

But more importantly, the reason this EU ruling will not be followed here is because it's bad for the lawyers. Ruling that APIs can be copyrighted will generate much more work for lawyers, and US laws have always (or at least for the last century) been all about increasing the work for lawyers, even if they have extremely detrimental effects on the rest of society and the economy.

> ...and US laws have always (or at least for the last century) been all about increasing the work for lawyers, even if they have extremely detrimental effects on the rest of society and the economy.

When you realize that 60% of the senate and almost 40% of the house list lawyer as their occupation, things become quite a bit clearer.

Quoting:things become quite a bit clearer

And falls in line with near 10% approval of job performance.

<-- Watches thread with glee.

Shhhhh!

I'm watching this thread with meh. Too hot and tired for glee!

Glee went home hours ago, there's just me and Mumble Moan, and we're both tired.

To say I strongly disagree with Khamul would be an understatement in the extreme. To elaborate would be a TOS violation.

@caitlyn: It should be fairly obvious that my posts were somewhat tongue-in-cheek and extreme in their predictions. What parts do you not agree with? That the USA has NIH (see: metric system adoption)? That laws mainly benefit lawyers and give them more work? That ruling that APIs and programming languages are copyright-protected will cause all sorts of problems, confusion, and lawsuits? Or just that the economy will collapse and the country will break up? I honestly don't see how any of this could be considered a "TOS violation".

> I honestly don't see how any of this could be considered a "TOS violation".

Since it was obviously farcical, neither do I. However, caitlyn didn't say your post was a TOS violation. She said that if she elaborated it would be a TOS violation.

Quoting:Since it was obviously farcical, neither do I. However, caitlyn didn't say your post was a TOS violation. She said that if she elaborated it would be a TOS violation.

Correct. If I responded to the real issues behind the humor, or what I saw as the message behind the humor it would be a TOS violation.