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Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by kybernetikos on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @06:40PM (#16693473)
I'm trying to understand here - is the idea that if they had put a bunch of developers who had never seen the API that they were implementing (normal clean rooms allow documentation, but api documentation is pretty much the signatures and that pretty much is the material we're talking about being copyrighted), provided the clean room engineers only with example code that used the apis and that they had to make work then they would most likely not have a problem, even if the resulting code had blocks that were character-for-character identical (since interfaces likely would come out identical to those they needed to be interoperable with)?

Obviously that sounds pretty crazy, but if it's true, it would at least be an approach that I could understand.

Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by hcknwscommenter on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:59AM (#16695405)
>normal clean rooms allow documentation

Uhhh. No. Just no. I don't think you understand the meaning of "clean room" in this context. In this context, clean room means that the person in the room is untainted by any copyrighted information full stop.

Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by kybernetikos on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @02:00AM (#16695711)
Yes, and the normal way you do this is by having some people (who can be tainted) write a bunch of documentation. Then the documentation gets passed to the people working in the 'clean room' who then implement based on that documentation.

The problem I'm describing is that in this case the kind of thing you'd typically want to write in that documentation is exactly the signatures of methods, which would amount to copying the copyrighted material and would taint the whole clean room. I'm trying to think of a way you could even do clean room engineering if the signatures of methods are copyright information. The reimplement from usage examples is the only thing I can come up with.

Re:Oracle Wins Revival of Billion-Dollar Case Against Google by bonesss on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @04:15AM (#16696240)
Not a lawyer, and I agree with your overall point, but I think usage examples are as tainted as the raw API.If the API is copyrighted with no fair use exemption for interop, why would that protection not extend to the API usage which contain the same information? "void IFoo.bar()" and "myFoo.bar() // returns void" are pretty similar and equally as "infringing" IMO.

These $9 Billion dollars will look great on Oracles bottom line. The mega-billions in possible lost trade and efficiency make me think this ruling gets reversed with a vengeance.