Re:Google’s Supreme Court faceoff with Oracle was a disaster...
by nodamage on Thursday October 08, 2020 @11:04PM
(#24726332)
> Exercising creativity can't be the hook if recipes have that and aren't copyrightable.
Sure, creativity is a requirement but it isn't the only requirement. But think about why a cookbook of selected recipes is copyrightable even if the recipes individually aren't.
> And that's what an API is. It's a formal functional specification.
The problem for Google is the Java API is also code, which is generally copyrightable. You seem to be saying that since this particular code happens to form a specification it should be treated differently under copyright law, but I'm not sure the court would find that argument very convincing.
Sure, creativity is a requirement but it isn't the only requirement. But think about why a cookbook of selected recipes is copyrightable even if the recipes individually aren't.
> And that's what an API is. It's a formal functional specification.
The problem for Google is the Java API is also code, which is generally copyrightable. You seem to be saying that since this particular code happens to form a specification it should be treated differently under copyright law, but I'm not sure the court would find that argument very convincing.