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Originally Posted by elcreative
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As Afv mentions, that's not quite the whole story. The jury were told to assume that APIs are copyrightable (which they're not, in the EU anyway and most likely not in the US either, judge still to decide that.) and if APIs are copyrightable, did Google infringe. Well, Yes is really the only answer anyone could ever give to that question.
The judge seems quite technically knowledgable and has programmed so I find it quite likely he'll decide APIs are not copyrightable and clear google of that.
The patent violation offence, I'm really glad the jury found in favour of Google. If you read the details of the court case where the discussion of simulation vs pattern matching and static vs run-time symbol replacement occurred, it was clear oracle were spreading fud even in the face of experts, who originally agreed with oracle, having changed their minds upon hearing how Googles dex functioned.
When I read it though, I had doubts over whether a non-technically inclined jury would be able to make the same conclusion any programmer would. It's good to see they have
Regarding the 9 lines, the judge wasn't all that impressed that Oracle wanted to go for damages on it. It seems like he realises nobody in their right mind would deliberately copy a handful of lines of range checking code that every high school programmer (and he himself) can and has written numerous times. Most likely google goofed and made a mistake by including the code instead of deliberately copying it. They should be forced to remove it (or license it
) but to show it cost Oracle money or helped Google, that's going to be an impressive feat if they pull it off.
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Judge: We heard the testimony of Mr. Bloch. I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this problem. I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like rangeCheck a hundred times before. I could do it, you could do it. The idea that someone would copy that when they could do it themselves just as fast, it was an accident. There's no way you could say that was speeding them along to the marketplace. You're one of the best lawyers in America, how could you even make that kind of argument?
Oracle: I want to come back to rangeCheck.
Judge: rangeCheck! All it does is make sure the numbers you're inputting are within a range, and gives them some sort of exceptional treatment. That witness, when he said a high school student could do it--
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For anyone interested in the full details, check out
http://www.groklaw.net/
It's irritating that media places like the BBC mis-report things. In this case what they've said is true, but they've missed sufficient details (like the judge saying assume they're copyrightable when making your decision) that it leads readers to the wrong conclusions.