We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
WHY 72 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SCHOLARS SUPPORTED GOOGLE'S COPYRIGHTABILITY ANALYSIS IN THE ORACLE CASE.
- Authors
Samuelson, Pamela; Crump, Catherine
- Abstract
In January 2020, 72 intellectual property scholars signed on to an amicus curiae brief in support of Google's position that it did not infringe Oracle's copyright when it incorporated parts of the Java Application Program Interface (API) into its Android software, an issue that came before the U.S. Supreme Court in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. In ruling that the declarations of the Java API at issue in this case, as well as the structure, sequence, and organization (SSO) embodied in the declarations, were protectable expression as a matter of U.S. copyright law, the Federal Circuit's 2014 Oracle decision adopted an erroneously narrow view of the Supreme Court's decision in Baker v. Selden and of congressional codification of Baker's exclusion of systems and methods from copyright's scope in 17 U.S.C. § 102(b). Precedents from the Ninth and Second Circuits have persuasively held that program interfaces necessary for program compatibility are unprotectable by copyright law, decisions that the Federal Circuit either misconstrued or ignored. The Federal Circuit also had a mistaken understanding of the merger doctrine as applied in computer program copyright cases. Its view is irreconcilable with Baker and other persuasive decisions. Case law from numerous circuits recognizes that when the design choices of subsequent programmers are constrained by the interface designs embodied in earlier programs, the merger doctrine applies so that programmers can reuse elements necessary to achieve compatibility. Because of the Federal Circuit's numerous errors in analyzing Google's copyrightability defense, this Article, like the brief from which it is drawn, concludes that the Supreme Court would have been justified in overturning the Federal Circuit's ruling on copyrightability grounds. (The Supreme Court instead decided the case for Google on the fair use issue.) Allowing programmers to reuse interfaces that enable compatibility promotes the ongoing progress in the field of computer programming as well as advancing the science of computing, in keeping with the constitutional purpose of copyright law.
- Subjects
INTELLECTUAL property; APPLICATION program interfaces; COMPUTER programming; COPYRIGHT lawsuits; UNITED States. Supreme Court
- Publication
Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 2021, Vol 36, Issue 1, p413
- ISSN
1086-3818
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.15779/Z38R49G952