The history of the legal battle between Google and Oracle over the Java API as implemnted in Android OS has been nothing short of legendary. It dragged on for years and painted a strange picture of the software landscape that continues to haunt corporations, developers, and legal scholars. The most recent decision in this case, a Federal court reversal on appeal in favor of Oracle, essentially finds that APIs are copyrightable.

In the wake of this struggle, a group of 77 computer scientists have asked the Supreme Court to review recent decisions in this case based on the premise that APIs should not be enforceable by copyright law. The group of eminent computer scientists took the lead in writing a letter to the Supreme Court, to raise awareness of the consequences of a decision in favor of Oracle on the technological field.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the leading nonprofit organization defending civil liberties in the digital world, filed a brief with the Supreme Court of the United States. The Supreme Court was asked to review a decision of the Court of Appeal in the dispute between Oracle and Google over Android’s version of Java.

A battle over royalties

Oracle attacked Google for the violation of its copyright and patents related to Java in its Android operating system. The Mountain View company was specifically accused of copying the structure and organization of the Java application programming interface, in part to facilitate the work of developers–familiar with Java–and encourage them to write programs for the mobile operating system.

Google created their own version of the Java API, but in order to allow developers to write programs for Android, Google used the same names, structure and functionality as a Java API.

In 2012, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District Court of California ruled in favor of Google stating that the APIs are not copyrightable. But the Federal Court of Appeal decided in May this year that the Java APIs could in fact be protected, and asked the District Court to check whether the use of Google could be considered fair use.

Later, Google has asked the Supreme Court to review the decision of the Federal Court, which will have major implications on current practices in software development, according to scientists.

“For decades, computer scientists and the courts have all understood that copyright doesn’t protect APIs,” EFF Special Counsel Michael Barclay said. “We hope that the Supreme Court will review this case and reverse the Federal Circuit’s misguided opinion, which up-ended decades of industry practice and threatens the basic principles upon which our technology sector was built.”

Copyright APIs will stifle innovation

The EFF filling said that the decision of the Federal Court is a major threat to the technology sector and the public. If maintained, Oracle and other companies will have unprecedented power, which will be dangerous for the future of innovation.

The scientists argue that the free use and open application programming interfaces has been both systematic and critical in the IT industry since its inception, and defend reasonable assumption that the API and other APIs are not copyrightable. Open APIs are essential for many modern developments, including Unix operating systems, programming languages ​​such as C, network and internet protocols, and most importantly cloud computing.

Among the scientists, there are five winners of the prestigious Turing Award–the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Computer – Four holders of the National Medal of Technology and a number of members of the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, according to the EFF filling. The list also includes designers of computer systems and programming languages such as AppleScript, AWK, C++, Haskell, IBM S/360, Java, JavaScript, Lotus 1-2-3, MS-DOS, Python, Scala, SmallTalk, TCP/IP, Unix, and Wiki.

“The Federal Circuit’s decision was wrong and dangerous for technological innovation,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “Excluding APIs from copyright protection has been essential to the development of modern computers and the Internet. The ruling is bad law, and bad policy.”

When programmers can freely reuse or reverse a PLC without acquiring an expensive license or risk a trial, they can create compatible software that the original creator of the interface would perhaps never considered or possessed the resources to do it, says the scientists in their application.

The computer scientists have cited numerous instances of key developments, including IBM PC clones of the C programming language and the Internet, which benefited from the absence of copyright in the API. The freedom to reuse API also enables software developers to continue supporting applications or orphan operating data in systems that are no longer supported by their creators.

If APIs are copyrightable, it’s argued, the API creators would have a veto over any developer who wants to create a compatible program. Computer scientists therefore support the order of Judge Alsup indicating that API is a ‘system or mode,’ which cannot be protected under Section 102 (b) of the [US] Law Act of author.

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