Legally Speaking: Oracle v. Google: Are APIs Copyrightable?

The article discusses a U.S. intellectual property lawsuit between the computer companies Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. concerning the copyright of application program interfaces, arguing that the May, 2012 ruling in favor of Google will be upheld. Topics include the Java computer programming languag...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Communications of the ACM Vol. 55; no. 11; pp. 25 - 28
Main Author:	Samuelson, Pamela
Format:	Opinion
Published:	Association for Computing Machinery Nov2012
Subjects:	Application program interfaces Copyright of electronic data Intellectual property lawsuits Computer software laws Actions & defenses (Law)
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

Description
Summary:	The article discusses a U.S. intellectual property lawsuit between the computer companies Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. concerning the copyright of application program interfaces, arguing that the May, 2012 ruling in favor of Google will be upheld. Topics include the Java computer programming language, the acquisition of the computer company Sun Microsystems by Oracle, and previous electronic copyright court decisions.