Expand /“Everyone understands that APIs, announcing codes, aren’t copyrightable,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during Wednesday’s oral arguments. But the majority of her coworkers did not appear convinced. (charge: Paul Marotta/Getty Pictures )
The Supreme Court’s eight justices on Wednesday appeared suspicious of Google’s argument that software programming interfaces (APIs) aren’t protected by copyright legislation. The high court had been hearing arguments from Google’s decade-long legal struggle with Oracle, a conflict that goes back into 2012. Oracle asserts that Google infringed its copyright in the Java programming language once it re-implemented Java APIs to be used by Android program {} .
The bets in the event are very large for Google, which might invest Oracle billions of dollars in compensation. More to the point, an Oracle win may reshape the copyright law treats APIs, providing incumbents that the ability to lock out rivals who wish to construct compatible applications.
For decades before Oracle’s suit, many folks in the software sector supposed that APIs could not be copyrighted. This meant a software firm could re-implement that the APIs of a competitor’s product so as to allow software designed to operate together with all the competitor’s product to utilize its very own.
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