Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom (ars technica)
But the jury couldn't reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid 'fair use' defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue will be briefed later this week."
Posted May 7, 2012 20:26 UTC (Mon)
by storner (subscriber, #119)
[Link] (21 responses)
However, the judge has yet to decide whether API's really ARE copyrightable. Unless he does so (and most observers believe that he will find that is NOT the case) then this "guilty" verdict becomes irrelevant; you cannot infringe copyright on something that cannot be copyrighted.
Posted May 7, 2012 20:40 UTC (Mon)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (20 responses)
Overall I feel that any jury in cases like this is enormously prejudiced against the plaintiff (Google). For lay persons things like API or 9 line functions appear complex and mysterious and thus definitely copyrightable. But ask them whether a kitchen recipe for lemonade should be copyrightable and they will unanimously vote NO.
Posted May 7, 2012 20:58 UTC (Mon)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (18 responses)
I believe they were told: Assume for now that X is copyrightable...
They could have found that Google didn't infringe on copyright (eg, it may have had a valid "fair use" defense) in which case the question of whether or not X is copyrightable would be moot.
But now, of course, the question of whether or not X is copyrightable is extremely relevant and will need to be decided.
Posted May 7, 2012 21:11 UTC (Mon)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (17 responses)
And what does "assume that X is true" mean, really? Jurors are not legal theorem provers that one can use to run different "what if" scenarios based on different input data :-)
Posted May 7, 2012 21:20 UTC (Mon)
by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
[Link] (3 responses)
Don't you agree that "assuming" that APIs are copyrigt-able, when Google's major defense is that they are not, further prejudices the jury against Google?
I don't know. I'm not a lawyer.
And what does "assume that X is true" mean, really?
I don't know. I'm not the judge. I can speculate that he wants to save time: He hasn't yet decided whether or not APIs are copyrightable, but if he decides they are, he doesn't want to have to go back and ask the jury whether or not Google violated the API copyright. But this is just speculation; you'd have to ask the judge.
Posted May 7, 2012 21:48 UTC (Mon)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 8, 2012 19:35 UTC (Tue)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 13:16 UTC (Tue)
by jpnp (guest, #63341)
[Link]
Posted May 7, 2012 21:53 UTC (Mon)
by boog (subscriber, #30882)
[Link]
Posted May 7, 2012 22:51 UTC (Mon)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (3 responses)
Not really. Not unless the jury was made up of morons.
The Jury's job was to decide whether or not Google violated copyright, assuming that APIs are copyright-able.
That's like telling a Jury to decide: Assuming that smiling is copyrightable and Joe smiled first did Tom then violate copyright in this photograph. Safe to say if the Tom is seen smiling then yes he did violate copyright. If the guy was not smiling then it wouldn't make the Jury biased against the photograph, would it?
It doesn't seem like much of a surprise at all. The only surprise was that the Jury was so mixed over it.
It seems very true that Android does use some Java APIs. That was one of the major points behind Android in the first place... Java is very popular in embedded space and thus a lot of developers were already familiar with developing for Android before Android ever came out. In addition Android works by using a Sun Java compiler to create bytecode that is then transformed to a compatible format for Dalvik.
So Google's defense in this case was that they added so much to the API that it was no longer derivative.. that their version constituted fair use. Which seems like a weak argument.
Now the Judge has to decide whether or not APIs are copyrightable.
The Judge was hoping that the Jury would rule 'no' so that he wouldn't have to make a decision. That way he could of left it a gray area in the law that was up to interpretation. Now he has to do a lot of work and a lot of research and it's generally going to be a PITA. So from the Judge's perspective the Jury side of things was a bit of a bust. Now he has to do more work and that is irritating. The only thing worse then that would be to have his decision quickly overturned and then be made to look stupid.
Keep in mind that at this point they are mostly making it up as they go along. Also notice that copyright is unnatural, arbitrary, inherently conflicting, and designed with intentional unknowns and vast gray areas.
Lets hope that the Judge will say that APIs are not copyrightable and end this wasteful farce right now.
Otherwise there are all sorts of other fun things to look forward to...
Unix copyrights + Linux + POSIX API
And all sorts of fun stuff like that. The sky is the limit. Use a API created by another group? You would have some potential conflicts.
Posted May 8, 2012 7:12 UTC (Tue)
by Seegras (guest, #20463)
[Link] (1 responses)
If APIs are copyrightable, all the Hell will break loose.
C - C++ - Java... EVERYONE will be in a mess. SQL - PL/SQL ... especially Oracle ;)))
Posted May 8, 2012 8:10 UTC (Tue)
by job (guest, #670)
[Link]
Posted May 9, 2012 1:11 UTC (Wed)
by andreasb (guest, #80258)
[Link]
Now this is off-topic and nitpicking, but still… Your example would work if it were about patents. Unless I'm mistaken, copyright is about the actual copying of works, not their similarity. If Tom has never seen Joe's smile he doesn't violate copyright with his own smile since it is not based on Joe's work — even if both smiles looked identical. In fact he would have his own copyright on that smile.
ISTR there being an actual case of two independent copyrights on mostly identical musical works.
Posted May 7, 2012 23:59 UTC (Mon)
by ajross (guest, #4563)
[Link] (6 responses)
Think of this as an optimization: getting a finding of facts out of the jury now (i.e. "If I later find that the API is copyrightable, did they infringe?") allows the jury to be dismissed earlier and gets the media out of the courtroom.
Posted May 8, 2012 15:35 UTC (Tue)
by amacater (subscriber, #790)
[Link] (1 responses)
Infringement is a matter of fact - so the judge is saying to the jury:
That's a finding of fact by the jury: if Google never infringed, Oracle have no case. If google have a valid defence, Oracle have no case.
This gets the finding of fact, which is all that the jury can do. _When_ this case goes to appeal, they can leave aside the factual questions put to the jury - "Jury nullification" - and concentrate on the issues of law.
Then the judge goes on to establish the law as to whether APIs are actually copyrightable.
Then the judge will go on to decide the patent issue
Posted May 8, 2012 16:52 UTC (Tue)
by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
[Link]
Posted May 10, 2012 14:54 UTC (Thu)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link] (3 responses)
Given the question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not the issue, and given that the question of whether Google's usage falls within fair use is also separate, it seems that the only question the jury were asked to consider is 'did any Java code (where 'code' includes headers) go into Dalvik?'
What I'm not seeing is any way the jury could have decided 'no'. This doesn't even seem to be contested; of course the header definitions were copied. What was the point of asking the question in the first place if everyone already agrees on the answer?
Posted May 10, 2012 14:58 UTC (Thu)
by mikov (guest, #33179)
[Link]
Posted May 10, 2012 15:31 UTC (Thu)
by ajross (guest, #4563)
[Link] (1 responses)
Because it's a court case, not a debate, and courts have rules. Among them is the requirement that issues of fact (like whether or not infringement occurred) must be decided by a Jury.
You seem to be upset that the question was "unfair". Of course it was: facts aren't fair, they're just facts. No one sane would have found otherwise. But the Jury still had to issue a finding.
Posted May 14, 2012 10:27 UTC (Mon)
by nye (subscriber, #51576)
[Link]
I think you have me confused for somebody else. I'm not upset at all; I'm just trying to understand the point of this - I wasn't previously aware that facts which are not in dispute still had to be decided by a jury (in this country we wouldn't even have a jury in this case).
Posted May 8, 2012 2:30 UTC (Tue)
by jjs (guest, #10315)
[Link]
1. The APIs aren't copyrightable
Probably others as well.
Posted May 7, 2012 23:51 UTC (Mon)
by blitzkrieg3 (guest, #57873)
[Link]
> [Update 6: The judge has stated, pending judgment as a matter of law, that there is "zero finding of copyright liability" other than the 9 lines of code to which Oracle's damages report attributes no value. A good day for Google overall.]
Posted May 7, 2012 21:02 UTC (Mon)
by karim (subscriber, #114)
[Link]
Plus, the jury didn't rule on "fair use". This whole "Goolge guilty" line all over the news is very misleading.
Posted May 8, 2012 1:04 UTC (Tue)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (10 responses)
As I understand it, the jury was asked: assuming that APIs are copyrightable, did Google engage in copying? The jury, of course, replied "yes": we all know that they had to do this to implement Java. They were asked a second question: given some rules that the judge explained to the jury about fair use, was the Google copying (if any) fair use? In this case, the jury answered "we can't decide" (they couldn't agree).
So it's hard to say based on this that Google lost. Had the jury clearly said that the copying wasn't fair use, they'd be in trouble.
Posted May 8, 2012 5:16 UTC (Tue)
by cmccabe (guest, #60281)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 7:56 UTC (Tue)
by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
[Link] (1 responses)
Note also that it's clear that Judge Alsup is conducting this trial with a view to a possible appeal.
By getting the jury to determine facts that may become irrelevant depending on how he decides the law, he's set up to avoid having to reconvene a jury trial with a new jury in the event that the appeals court tells him he made a mistake in his interpretation of the law.
From the outside, it looks like Judge Alsup is very aware of how important any precedent set as a result of this case will be, and doesn't want questions of fact distracting the appeals courts from the questions of law.
As a nice side effect (and I think he's considered this, too) it ensures that when the appeals court is asked to rule on matters of law, it's not completely abstract; the appeals court will be able to look at their decision in the light of a real jury's findings, and will be aware of the full implications of their decision - there won't be any "well, this is how the world should be, because I expect a jury would obviously see this case as fair use" in the appeals world.
Posted May 8, 2012 11:37 UTC (Tue)
by sorpigal (guest, #36106)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 8:17 UTC (Tue)
by job (guest, #670)
[Link] (6 responses)
Anyways, I've learned not to put to much weight in these kind of rulings. I'm sure the gaping holes in the ruling is reasonable for someone who understands the legal system, and that it will all be explained in time. There is little alternative to Google winning this in the wider economical perspective.
Posted May 8, 2012 9:06 UTC (Tue)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
I also note that people have been looking for a better system than juries (in an ad-hoc intermittent fashion) for most of a millennium, and nothing obviously better has emerged. Everything else anyone has tried is prone to capture by one or another interest group or power bloc.
Posted May 8, 2012 12:14 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
The US habit of throwing people off pretty much *ensures* it is NOT a jury of your peers, as originally constituted.
Cheers,
Posted May 8, 2012 14:53 UTC (Tue)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link] (2 responses)
The only major advantage of the Jury system in the USA is that the Jury has the legal ability to nullify laws. If a Jury decides that a law or a ruling is unjust they could declare the defendant not guilty, even if he is clearly guilty of breaking the law.
Posted May 8, 2012 17:30 UTC (Tue)
by job (guest, #670)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 8, 2012 18:43 UTC (Tue)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link]
There are undoubtedly better books describing the history of the jury system, but according to the thesis of the book various changes in the the criminal system in the United States has turned juries into rubber stamps. Jury conviction rates are significantly higher (double or more) today than a hundred years ago. Juries used to have far more discretion than they do today. Now the laws are so detailed, and their definitions so all-encompassing, that juries are given very little leeway to show leniency or to provide the defendant with any true benefit of a doubt.
Posted May 8, 2012 16:24 UTC (Tue)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 15:47 UTC (Tue)
by tseaver (guest, #1544)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted May 8, 2012 17:59 UTC (Tue)
by SEMW (guest, #52697)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted May 8, 2012 18:53 UTC (Tue)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link] (1 responses)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Amendment_to_the_Uni...
This makes the United States the last country, I believe, to keep juries for civil cases, and extremely difficult to change. Most of the individual states still have juries for civil cases, too, even though this is usually not required by the state's constitution.
Posted May 8, 2012 18:54 UTC (Tue)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 18:47 UTC (Tue)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 18:27 UTC (Tue)
by b7j0c (guest, #27559)
[Link]
Posted May 8, 2012 22:13 UTC (Tue)
by dbruce (guest, #57948)
[Link] (2 responses)
This was a nearly-complete win for Google. To paraphrase, the judge instructed the jury that "If we assume for a moment that APIs are copyrightable (which I will decide later), does that mean Google infringed anything"? The jury responded that "If APIs are copyrightable, then yes, Google infringed them. Plus, Google shouldn't have copied that 9 line function that slipped into Android by mistake and has since been removed".
So, Oracle is dead in the water as far as copyrights are concerned unless the judge accepts their radical idea that APIs can be copyrighted, which would fly in the face of how programming has worked for decades. This judge clearly "gets it", and is well aware of the recent EU decision on this very subject. I think Google will be completely off the hook except for the nine lines of now-removed code of the 15M LOC in Android. Perhaps the judge will award Oracle 0.0000006% of the price of a few hundred million *free* downloads of the Android system.
Posted May 8, 2012 22:32 UTC (Tue)
by cortana (subscriber, #24596)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted May 9, 2012 13:17 UTC (Wed)
by charlieb (guest, #23340)
[Link]
You speak about that case in the past tense - but it is still ongoing.
Posted May 10, 2012 12:21 UTC (Thu)
by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033)
[Link]
Someone must have been the first to implement a stack for procedure calls in assembly language. That's an ABI. If it's copyright-able, every piece of code written since then that uses a stack to pass arguments and save return addresses is in violation!
So say goodbye to everything containing a CPU.
Hopefully the judge will realize that the ultimate conclusion of allowing ABIs to be copyrighted is much the same as allowing a toddler to play with a fully-armed H-bomb.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
1."X" is copyright-able .
2. Google copied "X".
They couldn't possibly have reached a different verdict on the infringement issue. What's the point? I don't know whether estoppel comes into play here, but that's probably not up to the jury to decide.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
There is no basis in reality to go off here and is clearly very subjective.
Microsoft copyright + Wine + Win32 API
Device firmwares + Drivers + Linux
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
"assume for the moment that Oracle have copyright: if so, on the facts
in front of you, is it a fact that Google infringed? If they did infringe, did they have any defence"
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
2. Even if they are, we didn't copy enough to matter
3. Even if we did, we did it under fair use
4. Even if we didn't meet fair use, Sun had already given us permission via CEO and other statements
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
IANAL, but I'm paraphrasing what I was told by a judge when I was on a jury pool: juries decide what the facts of a case are, judges lay out the rules about what they are to decide (for example, a judge will explain what premeditation is, and the jury has to decide whether a killing was premeditated).
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
I'm thinking also that the judge was hoping the jury might come back with a "No" for the infringement question, which would mean he wouldn't have to rule on whether APIs are copyrightable because the outcome would be moot. For sticky issues like this judges would probably just as soon leave the question unanswered, if they can, in hopes that the industry works it out peacefully without ever having it come to a ruling the outcome of which can only be bad for one group or another.
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
If the idea is to protect against dysfunctional judges, I'm pretty sure there are better ways.
That's one of the purposes. Another purpose is to ensure that legislators and judges cannot drift too far away from the average man -- and if anything the US habit of throwing off juries anyone who has detectable skills helps here, odious though it is. It's as if they're de-eliting the jury pool. (Not that the US system of jury selection doesn't have other huge problems -- jurisdiction shopping, groundless but nonetheless useful appeals to local pride...)
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
Wol
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
In the US, juries decide facts, judges interpret the law
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
"matter of fact", to be settled by a jury, while the question of whether
an API is copyrightable is a "matter of law", to be settled by the judge:
they both require similar depth of understanding of copyright law.
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)
Ars got it wrong - go to Groklaw
Ars got it wrong - go to Groklaw
Ars got it wrong - go to Groklaw
> for what, 7 years?
API copyright nightmare