Though the choices are creative, it's necessary to replicate them exactly to produce a functioning interface for existing Java code. It's like a design for an electrical connector; maybe patentable, but it's essential to the function so shouldn't be copyrightable.
Interesting. This argument seems to imply that languages are copyrightable based upon creativity in ordering, punctuation, use of certain expressions such as `&`, etc. How is that different from your example? In fact a computer language itself is nothing but an API to a human-readable specification for machine behavior. I can see the specification being a creative work and hence being patentable. I don't see the same for the API code.
I'll have to think more about it. I can't offer a more substantive counter-argument now.
Here, the Java APIs were copied literally. For example, say you’ve got a function to append an item to a list:
Append(item, list) Append(list, item)
If you changed the order of the parameters, you wouldn’t be literally copying, even though it’s the same basic signature. That’s the Baker case. You can’t monopolize the method of appending an item to a list by extending copyright to all possible permutations of the limited ways to write the signature.
But what happens if you do literally copy? That’s this case. Then, the question is whether these choices of where to put the parameter reflect any creativity.
I happen to think they do—I strongly prefer the first form, which is how it’s done in the Common Lisp standard library.