Copyrightability of Java APIs Revisited.

The article looks at U.S. copyright law pertaining to the application program interfaces (APIs) of computer programs. The author discusses the 2014 U.S. Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit) ruling in the case Oracle v. Google which held that software company Oracle's APIs for the Java programming lang...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communications of the ACM Vol. 58; no. 3; pp. 22 - 25
Main Author: Samuelson, Pamela
Format: Opinion
Published: Association for Computing Machinery Mar2015
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: Copyrightability of Java APIs Revisited.
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        au: Samuelson, Pamela
        affil: Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information, University of California, Berkeley
      su:
        Application program interfaces
        Copyright
        Oracle Corp.
        Google Inc.
        Java programming language
        United States. Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit)
        United States. Supreme Court
        Copyright infringement
        Copyright cases
        Actions & defenses (Law)
        United States
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        subj:
          United States
          Application program interfaces
          Copyright
          Oracle Corp.
          Google Inc.
          Java programming language
          United States. Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit)
          United States. Supreme Court
          Copyright infringement
          Copyright cases
          Actions & defenses (Law)
      ab: The article looks at U.S. copyright law pertaining to the application program interfaces (APIs) of computer programs. The author discusses the 2014 U.S. Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit) ruling in the case Oracle v. Google which held that software company Oracle's APIs for the Java programming language are entitled to copyright protection, a decision which she says is contrary to numerous precedents in recent years. She says the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether to grant Internet firm Google's request to review the case and expresses support for Google on the grounds that copyright protection for APIs would damage the interoperability of programs and potentially generate much further litigation.
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    language: English
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