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| jonbwfc wrote: Oracle case crippled after judge rules APIs can’t be copyrighted Am I reading this right? The judge's ruling effectively says it's legal to reverse engineer an API if you treat it as a 'black box' and simply replicate the inputs and outputs? | |
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No what he said was
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| Quote: When there is only one way to express an idea or function, then everyone is free to do so and no one can monopolize that expression | |
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The judge seems to be saying that one cannot copyright specific calls to an API (the method) but only the larger program (the implementation) of which that method forms part.
Basically it doesn't matter that part of Google's code is identical to Oracle's because the API only provides one way to accomplish that function.