Oracle Appeals Google Verdict, Fights 'Software Exceptionalism'
Oracle tries to undo Google's successful defense of Android by claiming that software code is no different than literary text in matters of copyright.
In an effort to revive its copyright claim against Google and its Android mobile operating system, Oracle this week filed an appeal with United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Oracle is seeking to overturn U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup's determination that programming APIs are not subject to copyright protection. The company is not appealing its unsuccessful patent infringement claim. Oracle has maintained that the "structure, sequence and organization" of its Java APIs are protected under copyright law. But Judge Alsup last year ruled otherwise.
"So long as the specific code used to implement a method is different, anyone is free under the Copyright Act to write his or her own code to carry out exactly the same function or specification of any methods used in the Java API," Alsup wrote in his ruling. "It does not matter that the declaration or method header lines are identical...Duplication of the command structure is necessary for interoperability." Read full story on InformationWeek
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