17. @jon_bou
“In The Road Ahead, Bill Gated predicted that
the Information Super Highway would rule the
future. In the first edition, The Information Super
Highway was to be the logical successor to the
Internet, but definitely not using Internet
technology.”
November 1995,
First edition
The Ben Horowitz leaks:
20. A little bit of background
1995
@jon_bou
2003
2007
2012
publishes
is born
acquires
sues
2006 licensed under
sues
2010
21. The Google vs Oracle case
COPYRIGHT
@jon_bou
PATENTS DAMAGES
22. The Two Patents
6061520
RE38104
« Method and system for performing
static initialization »
« Method and apparatus for resolving
data references in generated code »
@jon_bou
23. The Copyright infringement
@jon_bou
37 Java packages alleged of infringement:
• rangeCheck function (9 lines)
• several test files
• structure, sequence and
organization of the Java API
• API documentation
24. District
court
April 31, 2012
“Anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out
exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API.
It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical
25. Court of
Appeals
May 9, 2014
“The structure, sequence
and organization of an API
are copyrightable”
26. Did Google infringe the
copyright or was it a fair use?
Back to the
District court
Fair use: doctrine that permits limited use of copy-righted
material without permission from the right holders
31. Web APIs are the new software patents
@jon_bou
PATENT
Open data, services and
resources to third-parties.
Legal and commercial
protection and monopoly
API
Publications and explanations of
scientific inventions
Counterpart:
Legal and commercial
protection and monopoly
Counterpart:
32. Open APIs, like patents before,
breed ecosystem innovation
@jon_bou
(… but it’s not enough)
