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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.

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> 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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