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What harm is there in copying APIs? | 396 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
What harm is there in copying APIs?
Authored by: mschmitz on Tuesday, April 24 2012 @ 11:40 PM EDT
The harm is plain and simple - it allows for a competitor to enter the market,
using just the API as 'precious IP'. (Everything else can evidently be
clean-roomed or even be technically improved upon.) Suddenly, there is a choice
who to license from - the original implementor, or the competitor. Just as you
spelled out yourself - the market for the original work has changed. (I leave
aside the fact that it hasn't really, as Google's Java implementation is not a
fully featured one.)

Toss in inane licensing conditions and field-of-use restrictions on the original
work, and you can probably see which way the market will swing.

Hence this lawsuit as a means to protect a revenue stream that has become
endangered by a company's own thickheadedness. Or rather, that of the original
company's succesor-in-interest. Now where did we see this pattern before?

The whole 'we did it to protect Java from forking' is just a smokescreen. Expect
this to change as the case unfolds.

-- mschmitz

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Auto analogy
Authored by: Ian Al on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 04:37 AM EDT
Take the example of the auto parking space interface. If that wasn't fully
protected by copyright law, there would be people all over the country marking
out auto parking spaces according to the interface spec. without paying a
licence to the person who laid the creative expression out there in the first
place, so to speak.

The parking space has taken years to perfect so that a range of complex
relationships involving vehicle widths, door openings, vehicle lengths, parking
density performance, access and turning circles are taken into account.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Auto analogy - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, April 25 2012 @ 02:06 PM EDT
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