Vviewpoints
Legally Speaking
Copyrightability of
Java APIs Revisited
A recent case challenges the long-standing view that application
program interfaces are not protectable under copyright law.
rights in Java, which shows it knew it
needed a license.
When these negotiations failed,
Google went ahead and copied 37 of
the Java APIs anyway in the Android
platform for mobile devices. Tens of
thousands of Java programmers have
written apps to run on the Android
platform. These apps have contributed to the extraordinary success of
Android devices.
Shortly after acquiring Sun and its
assets, Oracle sued Google for copyright
infringement. (There were originally
some patent claims in the case as well,
but a jury ruled against those claims.) Oracle relied on some judicial precedents
that had held the SSO of programs is protectable by copyright law as long as there
are multiple ways to design that SSO.
Section 102(b)
At issue in the Oracle case is the proper
interpretation of Section 102(b) of U.S.
copyright law. It states “[i]n no case
does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any
idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle or
FOR MORE THAN 20 years, the prevailingviewhasbeenthat application program inter- faces (APIs) are unprotect- able elements of copyrighted computer programs. According
to this view, programmers are free to
reimplement other firms’ APIs in independently written code. Competition and innovation in the software
industry has thrived amazingly well
in part because of rulings upholding
this understanding.
Challenging this view is the Court
of Appeals of the Federal Circuit
(CAFC) May 2014 decision in Oracle v.
Google. The CAFC held that the “
structure, sequence, and organization”
(SSO) of the Java APIs that Google
reimplemented in its Android software are protectable expression under copyright law. It reversed a lower
court ruling that the Java APIs were
not copyrightable.
Google has asked the U.S. Supreme
Court to review the CAFC’s ruling. Sev-
eral amicus curiae (friend of the court)
briefs have been filed in support of this
effort. Hewlett-Packard, Red Hat, and
Yahoo! are among these amici (as am I
and 77 computer scientists).
The Supreme Court may take the
case because the CAFC’s decision is
in conflict with other appellate court
rulings that exclude APIs from copyright protection. This column will explain the Oracle and Google theories
about the copyrightability of Java APIs
and the precedents on which each relies. The stakes in this case could not
be higher.
Oracle’s Claims
Developing Java APIs required considerable creativity. Sun’s engineers
had substantial freedom in the choices they made about how to structure
the APIs. The Java APIs are thus easily
original enough to qualify for copyright protection, says Oracle (which
acquired the intellectual property
(IP) rights in Java when it acquired
Sun Microsystems).
Java has achieved considerable success, which is why Google wanted to
use Java APIs in its software platform
for mobile devices. Google entered into
negotiations with Sun about licensing
DOI: 10.1145/2723669