>> the cookbook itself becomes copyrightable.

> But what is discussed here is not the cookbook but just the table of contents.

You probably can't copy that either. That's like Oracle's example of making a new Harry Potter book with all the same chapter titles.

I don't know if there are any good examples of APIs one can make based on books..

I mean you very much can copy

Chapter 1: Introducing the main character .. Chapter 6: Introducing side character Chapter 7: Arrival at the main story place .. Chapter 17: The final chapter

In fact there are whole classifications of literature that identify basic storylines, tropes, structure etc. . The reason you couldn't copy the harry potter chapter titles exactly is because they contain specific titles, e.g. "the boy who lived", but "<my own catchphrase for main character>" as the first chapter title is again very, very common.

Also, the argument is about reuse/interoperability. Recipes are something you use and the naming is functional and it is important that it is similar enough. I am not aware of harry potter chapters being used like that, but if authors start talking about "The sorting hat" chapter as a term of the art , then yes you should be able to use that term. Similarly to how you can introduce a weapon in your novel without paying royalties to Chekhov.

Picking a random bit of the API, ContainerOrderFocusTraversalPolicy::getImplicitDownCycleTraversal feels to me more like "the boy who lived", rather than "Introducing Side Character" -- I don't think anyone could reasonably claim you would end up at remotely the same thing, unless you were word-for-word copying thousands of lines of API.

I mean, I see your point, but you kind of have to to achieve the intended purpose.

> Also, the argument is about reuse/interoperability. Recipes are something you use and the naming is functional and it is important that it is similar enough. I am not aware of harry potter chapters being used like that, but if authors start talking about "The sorting hat" chapter as a term of the art , then yes you should be able to use that term. Similarly to how you can introduce a weapon in your novel without paying royalties to Chekhov.

I agree very much. I just don't think books are very useful for expressing those ideas. Interoperability is rarely an important consideration when writing a book.

Sure, if google renamed all the classes/methods, it would make a lot of difference.

I wonder how much you can game this.

Rename java.lang.String to google.java.lang.String and make google's dex compiler automatically look in the google namespace by default.

Not allowed? How about we just hash the Java API names and then let the compiler automatically apply a mapping from hash to google name.

In the worst case Google is probably still allowed to ship a tool that renames uses of the java api directly in the source code and switches it over to whatever Google's naming scheme is. If this wasn't allowed it would be equivalent to making it illegal to not use the Java api because doing the same chance by hand would is not meaningfully different.

>> the cookbook itself becomes copyrightable.

> But what is discussed here is not the cookbook but just the table of contents. The actual recipes are different.

We should be very cautious about trying to tackle the subject in this way. Illustration by analogy can be useful for explaining subtle concepts, but argument by analogy will only introduce more confusion.

Not really. A lot of people consider good APIs a work of art, independently of the implementation.

And? That does not address the question and note how you used "work of art" instead of code.

The fact is that lots of things can be "work" but that we as society do not want to bestow copyright for them. Again, the question is not "did someone put in work to make a good API?" but "are APIs something that should be copyrightable?".

Going with the recipe analogy: Society might be willing to give you some kind of recognition for "Joe's sandwich with this detailed recipe", but it is not going to give you an exclusive monopoly over "any and all dishes consisting of (bread, topping, condiment, vegetable)". Copyright is intended to reward creation, not to stifle any sort of however far away competition.

The whole point is that a "work of art" is by definition copyrightable. That's the whole Oracle line of argumentation.

You may disagree but here they are before the supreme court to rule about this. So the only thing I'm confident about is that it's not trivial question.

As said by others fair-use is a totally other point and if granted could offer Google some relieve.

Oracle must win on both points.