White House sides with Oracle, tells Supreme Court APIs are copyrightable (ArsTechnica)

Ars Technica reports that the US Justice Department has sided with Oracle in its dispute with Google. "The dispute centers on Google copying names, declarations, and header lines of the Java APIs in Android. Oracle filed suit, and in 2012, a San Francisco federal judge sided with Google. The judge ruled that the code in question could not be copyrighted. Oracle prevailed on appeal, however. A federal appeals court ruled that the "declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection." Google maintained that the code at issue is not entitled to copyright protection because it constitutes a "method of operation" or "system" that allows programs to communicate with one another." (Thanks to Martin Michlmayr)

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