The Supreme Court does tech
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Bad decision IMO. It's the software equivalent of saying "you can't make 3rd party tool attachments or parts to fit onto popular machines. "
Let's say a saw connects to its blade by using a specific type of star-shaped connector - this ruling says a 3rd party can't make a blade with that star-shaped connector without licensing the shape from the toolmaker.
The patent office is just ill equipped to deal with the tech world more generally.
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The hilarious thing here is that - Oracle did the exact thing for the Amazon S3 interface when making Oracle's cloud service.
They based their interface on AWS's so customer could switch back and forth between the two.
This potentially has big implications for the SW industry.
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I am sympathetic to Oracle’s case in that it requires great skills and experience to craft a powerful, coherent set of API, so it would be good if people/companies who do this well get rewarded for their good work.
I think there can be a middle ground where anyone is allowed to reimplement any API but the commercial distribution of that reimplementation is subject to the API’s copyright holder get paid royalty on some equitable terms that are available to any entity that wants to reimplement the API. But if this is not possible, that I would favor a ruling for Google and forego copyrighting API entirely.
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@xenon said in The Supreme Court does tech:
Let's say a saw connects to its blade by using a specific type of star-shaped connector - this ruling says a 3rd party can't make a blade with that star-shaped connector without licensing the shape from the toolmaker.
LEGO — they sue you if or you try to sell parts that connect to LEGO parts like LEGO parts would. To the extent that you don’t see generic “LEGO-compatible” toy blocks these days, that indicates LEGO has been successful preventing others from reimplementing their toy block interfaces.
I would much prefer a world where anyone is legally allowed to reimplement LEGO’s interface with the same licensing terms payable to LEGO that is available to all who wants to do so.
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I don't see anything wrong with a software copyright.
It is good that a line is drawn.
If the value comes from the API being copyrighted then it makes sense, you want to reward the people who invented it.
Of course you can get carried away. I'm sure IBM would copyright BXLE if they could. Maybe they have, but still there should be a limit.
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Cool, more concentration in the tech industry. Just what we need.
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@Axtremus said in The Supreme Court does tech:
@xenon said in The Supreme Court does tech:
Let's say a saw connects to its blade by using a specific type of star-shaped connector - this ruling says a 3rd party can't make a blade with that star-shaped connector without licensing the shape from the toolmaker.
LEGO — they sue you if or you try to sell parts that connect to LEGO parts like LEGO parts would. To the extent that you don’t see generic “LEGO-compatible” toy blocks these days, that indicates LEGO has been successful preventing others from reimplementing their toy block interfaces.
I would much prefer a world where anyone is legally allowed to reimplement LEGO’s interface with the same licensing terms payable to LEGO that is available to all who wants to do so.
Well - this is where analogies get fuzzy. In the case of Lego, the interface is the product.
In software the implementation and the interface are distinct things.
That said - I looked into this a bit more from a “legal” lens and I get how the judges got to the decision they did.
But this decision is just so far removed from the intent of patent law (increase the production innovations by protecting their creators) that it seems very wrong.
This will almost objectively lead to less software being created.
Also the secret sauce of a SW company is never its interface. Android was not the success it was because it implemented the Java interface.
But creating a moat around popular interfaces is a surefire way to more incumbent advantage (as Jon mentioned)
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@xenon If you can call LEGO’s toy block interface “the product,” why can some other technology not call their API “the product”? At best this argument can only say that this Oracle v. Google case is not a good case to support copyrighting API, not generally show that copyrighting API is a bad idea.
As for “concentration,” I think the real remedy is to just break up the companies that have grown “too big.” Tinkering with patent and copyright laws will not effectively address “concentration.”
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@Axtremus said in The Supreme Court does tech:
@xenon If you can call LEGO’s toy block interface “the product,” why can some other technology not call their API “the product”? At best this argument can only say that this Oracle v. Google case is not a good case to support copyrighting API, not generally show that copyrighting API is a bad idea.
As for “concentration,” I think the real remedy is to just break up the companies that have grown “too big.” Tinkering with patent and copyright laws will not effectively address “concentration.”
Not disagreeing. As I said, I can see the legal rationale.
I guess I reacted strongly because I think the application of the letter of the law is out of sync with the spirit of the constitutional underpinnings of patent law.
It's like if every nail manufacturer could patent their nail design - and regulations made it such that you needed an approved nail design to build anything you wanted to build. It'd lead to a bunch of vertically integrated real estate developers.
Anyways - not a perfect analogy. I just think tech has been hobbled patent law. There's a better solution out there where there'd be more innovation, inventors still get paid for their innovations and there'd be overall more and cheaper SW development.
