Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

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Can you elaborate a bit more on what parts of Alsup's decision the panel found issue with?

I remember Alsup used Sega v Accolade/Sony v Connectix from the Ninth circuit and Lotus v Borland from the First to justify his ruling. Did this panel decide that his line of reasoning was flawed/misapplied with regards to the previous fair use decisions (aka this isn't a case of fair use) or was this issue just out of his jurisdiction (which is what "it is for a jury to determine case-by-case" sounds like)? Or did they over turn the precedent that Alsup used?

Also, how does this ruling change the rest of the case? Does Oracle have a chance to restart the battle from square one or will they only be able to go to court for infringement on IP that Alsup had previously claimed uncopywritable?

The federal circuit found Alsup was confusing a ruling about fair use and copyright. It made clear the copyright must be established at the act of creating, not at the act of using. But some think it is a misinterpretation of the district court ruling.

> It made clear the copyright must be established at the act of creating, not at the act of using.

I don't see how that should change the result. An API is an API from the time it's created. It's inherently functional. You can't change a single argument or function name without changing the functional behavior of the API, which is as true the day it's created as the day someone wants to create a compatible reimplementation.

It seems to me like trying to claim a copyright over e.g. the shape of a toner cartridge for a printer because some creative process was used to generate the shape, even though it's the only shape that will fit in that printer, with the intent of using that to prevent anyone from making compatible toner cartridges for 95 years. That's clearly not what Congress had in mind when passing the Copyright Act.

Or maybe they confused Alsup's ruling:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140509/10133727178/appeal...

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