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Originally Posted by HarryT
Doubtful. As long as it was a "clean room" development and not based on the actual Java source code, they should be OK, just as there was no legal problem for the companies that produced "clones" of the original IBM PC. They were duplicating the functionality, but making no use of IBM's code. Similarly, the authors of the WINE Windows emulation environment for Linux are in the clear legally, because they've duplicated the Windows API, but used no Microsoft source code to do so.
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It depends on if the API definitions are copyrightable or not. If so, then WINE may be in trouble. Although I think that Microsoft is a bit more cluey that that, now that Balmer's left.