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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.

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Your bias is showing as well | 361 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Your bias is showing as well
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 20 2012 @ 06:03 PM EDT
Because, in practice, cloning an API has been rarely used as
a means for successful competition, especially in recent
years. So even if this option is taken off the table and no
one is allowed to clone an API (except in cases where the
original author expressly allows it, which will happen in
many cases), competition will not be restricted. To me,
saying that cloning APIs will hinder competition is not that
much different from saying disallowing copying of
documentation hinders competition (and cloning an API
basically makes writing books and documentation largely
unnecessary). Yeah, it makes the competitors work a little
harder, but it does not hurt their chances of success.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Your bias is showing as well
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 21 2012 @ 12:59 PM EDT
It could be all APIs ever written.
APIs (or rather, their SSO, which is at issue here) have always been copyrightable (well at least, since the Johnson Controls case, which Google has been unable to properly address despite Judge Alsup bringing it up frequently.) Also, no less than Stallman seems to think APIs are covered by copyright (look into the whole "readline/CLISP" kerfuffle.) As biased as Florian Mueller is, and as much as people here like to disparage him, his legal analysis is pretty good.

Groklaw, on the other hand, I find useful only for discovering issues Meuller "forgets" to report about, and then looking at the actual documents posted. The commentary (and comments) here are as biased as Florian's is, only in the opposite direction and minus the reasoned legal analysis.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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