Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 20:58 UTC (Mon) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica) by mikov
Parent article: Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom (ars technica)

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 21:11 UTC (Mon) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (17 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?

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 :-)

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 21:48 UTC (Mon) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link] (1 responses)

Fortunately being a lawyer is not a prerequisite for being able to form an informed opinion :-)

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 19:35 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

In some cases it is. To form an informed opinion on this, one needs to know if Federal law, the 9th Circuit or the specific district rules asks for or requires a judge to put forth such questions. Without knowing that your original question is not informed opinion but what we would want the world to be like.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 13:16 UTC (Tue) by jpnp (guest, #63341) [Link]

I guess that even Judge Alsup knew creating precedent on the copyright-ability of APIs has major implications and was trying to avoid having to do so. If the jury had cleared Google, he would have succeeded; as it is he'll have to make a decision.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 21:53 UTC (Mon) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]

The language around "assume" might seem ambiguous to a jury member (idiomatically, it could be interpreted as guidance that there was no controversy over the issue). However, if the judge goes on to rule that APIs can't be copyrighted, it will hardly matter that his instructions tended to help Oracle.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 22:51 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [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?

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.
There is no basis in reality to go off here and is clearly very subjective.

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
Microsoft copyright + Wine + Win32 API
Device firmwares + Drivers + Linux

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 7:12 UTC (Tue) by Seegras (guest, #20463) [Link] (1 responses)

You're being conservative.

If APIs are copyrightable, all the Hell will break loose.

C - C++ - Java... EVERYONE will be in a mess. SQL - PL/SQL ... especially Oracle ;)))

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 8:10 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Oh! That would be fun! I bet IBM is polishing their lawyers as we speak...

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 9, 2012 1:11 UTC (Wed) by andreasb (guest, #80258) [Link]

> 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.

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 7, 2012 23:59 UTC (Mon) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (6 responses)

You're confused about how this works. This isn't a criminal trial. The jury doesn't decide the case, they decide the facts. The question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not a "fact", it's an interpretation, and the judge will decide that.

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 15:35 UTC (Tue) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link] (1 responses)

In fact, if you read carefully, this is _exactly_ explained by Groklaw.

Infringement is a matter of fact - so the judge is saying to the jury:
"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"

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

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 16:52 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

There's a potentially-significant difference of attitude in whether he said "assume that this is copyrightable" or "ignore the issue that this may not be copyrightable" or "don't consider whether this is copyrightable or not". I would guess that any judge would say the third of these to a jury rather than either of the others (least prejudicial), while a paralegal would report it as the first (most logical). But I haven't read transcripts so I don't actually know.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 10, 2012 14:54 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (3 responses)

>You're confused about how this works. This isn't a criminal trial. The jury doesn't decide the case, they decide the facts. The question of whether APIs are copyrightable is not a "fact", it's an interpretation, and the judge will decide that.

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?

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 10, 2012 14:58 UTC (Thu) by mikov (guest, #33179) [Link]

Thank you! That was exactly what I was wondering.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 10, 2012 15:31 UTC (Thu) by ajross (guest, #4563) [Link] (1 responses)

> What was the point of asking the question in the first place if everyone already agrees on the answer?

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.

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 14, 2012 10:27 UTC (Mon) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

>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.

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).

Google guilty of infringement in Oracle trial; future legal headaches loom(ars technica)

Posted May 8, 2012 2:30 UTC (Tue) by jjs (guest, #10315) [Link]

Actually, like all good lawyers, Google had multiple defenses:

1. The APIs aren't copyrightable
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

Probably others as well.