If their argument boils down to "well, they should have agreed to make their system just as shitty as the rest of our systems so that they could be crappily compatible" then it's not hard to see why Google went a different direction.
Google's defense is incredibly weak. relying mostly on fair use.
the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Since that order emphasizes the importance of the APIs, it probably weighs in Oracle's favor.
We'll find out for sure in a few days.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/oracle-presi...
> There is one thing the jury won't know: the issue of whether APIs can be copyrighted at all is actually up in the air. It's a legal gray area that will be decided by Judge William Alsup—but only after the jury gives its verdict in this case. (When that happens, even a jury verdict in Oracle's favor could be a hollow one.)
which is exactly what felipeko was referring to.
If a juror genuinely believes that the idea of copyrighting APIs and extending that copyright to alternate implementations makes no sense, how can they come up with a decision that's anything but arbitrary? That's like me saying, 'Assume that 1 * 5 = 0, and then decide if if the satisfiability problem can be solved in linear time'.
If you give me a nonsensical set of assumptions, how can I come up with an answer that's not also nonsensical? If you give me some messed up numerical system like that one, well sure, maybe those definitions would propagate though to the definition of polynomial complexity as well. But what does that mean for the real world? Nothing - and law is meant to be applied, not some abstract theoretical exercise.
I just posted this to highlight the fact that things are in Oracle's favor.
jury told by Judge to assume APIs are copyrightable.
Since that order emphasizes the importance of the APIs, it probably weighs in Oracle's favor.
I mean, look at it this way - GNU is almost completely compatible with Unix, but it was rebuilt from the ground up. Even if AT&T hadn't given out the license for free, you'd have a hard time convincing me that GNU breaks some sort of copyright - the entire damn codebase was rewritten from the ground up. The design of the operating system may be the same, but copyrighting that is as ridiculous as patenting a geometric shape.