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Were the APIs de minimis when compared to the full work? | 275 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Were the APIs de minimis when compared to the full work?
Authored by: Ian Al on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 08:30 AM EDT
I still wonder at the judge coming to the conclusion that the 166 packages was a
copyright work as a whole and was also creative expression fixed in a medium.

The judge continues to conflate the Java SE API Specification (a programmer's
handbook about the interface) with the APIs which are the actual interface.

He explains that the jury are to compare the Android compilable code with the
Java SE API Specification. That should provoke a 'do what!' from any programmer.

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

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

the API SSO is not about de minimis
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 01 2012 @ 08:36 AM EDT
Asserted defenses are transformation and fair use (as well as the fact, BTW that
we didn't actually copy it, we wrote it ourselves in our clean room, from this
book, and this free code)

And while 37 out of 166 might look like a lot in the context of the
specification or the 'list of all the APIs', that only consists of around 400
source code files with the same names/directory and the same names spattered
around in some files. Names which are not protected. Meanwhile the standard of
comparison is to compare every line of compilable code (i.e everything except
the comments, and the Names BTW) all the files (all two million+ of them)

And conclude that they are substantially similar.

(which from one point of view could also be considered de minimis, but that only
applies to question 3)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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