Supreme Court inclined to affirm copyrightability holding Oracle vs. Google | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court inclined to affirm copyrightability holding Oracle vs. Google

fosspatents.com

9 pointsnojito8 comments

Oh Florian Mueller. We didn't hear from this shill in a long time. He "forgot" to disclose that he actually consulted for both Microsoft AND Oracle, including in this particular case.

Foss patents is written by florian mueller, a blogger with a long history of paid shilling and of copyright maximalism. Oracle in particular was a client.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/17/3250148/oracle-tells-cour...

Does this blog post even contain evidence of the court's leaning? From what I gathered yesterday, the court was hesitant to shake up the software industry. This post seems to just contain the author's hunch/desire?

Also, it'sincredibly condescending, calling people who don't think APIs should be copyrightable "morons" and "stupid".

He is a known shill who was actually paid by Oracle for a while. And disclosed it only after it was uncovered independently. Not exactly what I would call neither an impartial source nor a copyright law expert (he is a software developer and activist, no a lawyer).

Back in 2012, Florian Mueller (the blogger in question) was recognized as a consultant for Oracle in a lower court case that's been leading up to this moment (1).

(1) https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/17/3250148/oracle-tells-cour...

Even the pro-Google reporters I followed during the arguments yesterday concluded this appeared to be the lean. Both sides claim a ruling for the other side will be catastrophic to the software industry (both are wrong on this, mind you). But the questions seemed largely skeptical of Google's arguments, and one of the most notable claims the Google lawyer made was purely preposterous as a matter of law: That it would've been a lot more expensive to develop their own API and so they shouldn't have had to.

Reporters on Google's side of things seemed to think Goldstein blew conveying their side.

If the Supreme Court sides with Oracle, the obvious question question that comes to mind is:

What happens to WINE (unlicensed reimplementation of Windows APIs)?

What happens to Linux (reimplemented and essentially displaced proprietary Unix)?

SQL...

etc.

People get caught up in this but WINE is a compatibility layer explicitly designed for interoperability, and is non-commercial to boot. It would have an extremely strong case for fair use. It also doesn't harm the market value of Windows.

Meanwhile, Google cloned the Java API to build a proprietary platform they have made billions of dollars on, and they explicitly weren't interested in interoperability. (Android doesn't run Java apps and vice versa.) Also, by destroying the market value of a Java mobile OS, it fails at least a third pillar of the four-factor test for fair use.

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