As you can see from the Oracle
expert testimony, the
trial strategy was to draw a bright line between the
freely
available Java language (as laid out, e.g., the JLSpec
book), and the
API's which make the programming language
useful.
So the battle was largely
fought out over to what extent the
declarations of classes (or API "packages"
as Oracle wanted
to call them, blurring the distinction between declaration
and implementation) would qualify for copyright protection.
Judge Alsup ruled
at some point that mere names of API
classes and methods were too short and too
functional to
qualify for copyright protection, and it was subsequently
(after
the jury deliberated on copyright infringement)
decided by him that as a matter
of law the declaration of
APIs (as opposed to the code that implemented the
libraries
supporting them) did not qualify for copyright
protection.
--- Rosser's trick: "For every proof of me, there is a
shorter proof of my negation". [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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