decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Worst case scenario | 697 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Worst case scenario
Authored by: IANALitj on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 02:41 AM EDT
Your scenario seems quite implausible. However, since you are asking about a
worst case scenario, this is still possible. Stranger things have happened.

First the judge would have to rule the APIs to be copyrightable. This
assumption is well within the bounds of a worst case scenario, but most opinion
on Groklaw is that it is an unlikely outcome.

In order to dismiss Google's fair use claim as matter of law, the judge would
have to go far beyond the fact that the jury left that matter open. He would
have to rule that no reasonable jury could find in Google's favor on the facts
as presented in the trial. This assumption is also within the bounds of a worst
case scenario, but to me it seems very unlikely indeed. The more common
response to a jury failing to reach agreement would be to recognize that
reasonable jurors can differ, and have a new trial.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

xkcd: 748 and some commentary
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 09:55 AM EDT
Why speculating about worst-case is silly: http://xkcd.com/748/


If Google lose this, they are going to get so much help on appeal from pretty
much everyone if they need it. And they are possibly big enough to *not* need
it.

What do you expect to happen when you decide to troll an entire industry? I'd
expect the Nazgul, SFLC, and possibly even Microsoft's legal team throwing their
weight in behind Google on their appeal. Assuming they are appealing the
"API's are copyrightable" angle, of course. *Everyone* has far too
much to lose if this goes the other way.

Seriously, either this works out with Google winning, or all software
development leaves the USA, and the US Government (probably) won't let it go
that far. (For some types of people the stick is a more effective motivator
than the carrot)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )