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Q1 "work as a whole" is all the compilable code | 697 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
What the jury actually decided...
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 01:44 AM EDT
Before coming back to Q1, let me try to deal with Q4:

As has been pointed out by both other posters and the judge himself, question 4
was for an advisory verdict on an equitable matter reserved for the court.
Equitable matters are not decided by a jury - they only decide the facts with
respect of matters of law. The judge ultimately decides that question, and
that's also why it wouldn't have mattered if the jury hung on Q4.

This can be a difficult concept to get your head around because it involves two
different meanings of the word "law", so I'll say it again, hopefully
differently enough to make the distinction clear: (most) common law
jurisdictions have merged what originally were two separate court systems:
courts of law and courts of equity. Courts of law allow juries, while courts of
equity do not. So any matters of equity (such as laches or estoppel) are
decided by the judge alone. The judge may, however, ask a jury that is
constituted to determine the facts on a question of law (that is, a question to
be tried under the law court system, not the equity court system) for their
advice on a matter of equity that the judge alone decides on. Does that make it
any clearer?

As for Q1:

Perhaps the distinction was too subtle and I did not make the point clearly
enough, but I think it's an important distinction nonetheless. I agree with you
that the judges intention was to have the jury decide on the non literal
components of the API (spec) by presuming the bare spec to be copyrightable.
However, I think that both the judge and the lawyers are/were a bit confused,
because the question clearly states that it is in regards to "compilable
code". Somewhere they have equated compilable code with "API
packages" which is simply not the case. To me it looks like this
conflation caused the judge to ask the jury a question other than what he
intended, and it's going to have to get sorted out on appeal.

As for SSO, yes, it technically covers the non-compilable aspects of the
implementation, but that's because SSO is defined as the non-literal elements of
a computer program. I think that this is, at least partly, if not entirely,
what caused the confusion on the part of the judge (and the lawyers). They are
used to dealing with SSO as the non-literal elements of compilable code, so the
judge worded it that way and the lawyers didn't pick up on it. Another
possibility is that the judge didn't really understand the distinction between
an API and its implementation until it was too late to change the jury
instructions.

I do respect your opinion and interpretation, and I agreed with it at first, but
the more I read the words of the jury form, the more I came to the conclusions
above.

Does this make things clearer or am I just muddying the waters?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Q1 "work as a whole" is all the compilable code
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 10:18 AM EDT

All the compilable code for all 166 packages in J2SE

Which does not include the comments.

And the names are not protected.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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