Google v. Oracle: Amicus Briefing

Hello again, it's been a while. My administrative duties have sadly kept me busy, limiting my blogging since the summer. But since I've blogged consistently about Google v. Oracle (fka Oracle v. Google) about every two years, the time has come to blog again.

I won't recap the case here -my former post(s) do so nicely. I'm just reporting that 20+ amicus briefs were filed in the last week, which SCOTUSblog has nicely curated from the electronic filing system.

There are many industry briefs. They all say much the same thing - an Oracle win would be bad for industry, and also inconsistent with the law (The R Street brief -and prior op ed-describes how Oracle has copied Amazon's cloud based API declarations). But since I'm an academic, I'll focus on those briefs:

1. Brief of IP Scholars (Samuelson & Crump): Merger means that the API declarations cannot be protected
2. Brief of IP Scholars (Tushnet): Fair Use is warranted
3. Brief of Menell, Nimmer, Balganesh: Channeling dictates that API declarations are not protected
4. Brief of Lunney: Infringement only occurs if whole work is copied; protection does not promote the progress
5. Brief of Snow, Eichhorn, Sheppard: Fair Use jury verdict should not be overturned
6. Brief of Risch: Protection should be viewed through the lens of abstraction, filtration, and comparison

My brief is listed last, but it's certainly not least. Indeed, I think it's a really good brief. But of course I would say that. If you've read my prior blog posts on this (including the one linked above), you'll note that my brief puts into legal terms what I've been complaining about for eight or so years: by framing this case as a pure copyrightability question, the courts have lost sight of the context in which we consider the protection of the API declarations. There might be a world where the declarations, if published as part of a novel and reprinted in a pamphlet made by Google, are eligible for copyright registration. But in the context of filtration, which neither the district court nor the Federal Circuit performed, the declarations are not the type of expression that can be infringed by a competing compiler. Give it a read. It's better than Cats (and not just the new movie), you'll read it again and again.

An even better summary of all the briefs is here.

I conclude with a paragraph from the brief, which I think sums things up:

This case boils down to [the] question: can a company own a programming language through copyright? Oracle would say yes, but the entire history of compatible language compilers, compatible APIs, compatible video games and game systems, and other compatible software says no. Michael Risch, How Can Whelan v. Jaslow and Lotus v. Borland Both Be Right? Reexamining the Economics of Computer Software Reuse, 17 The J. Marshall J. Info. Tech. & Priv. L. 511, 539–44 (1999) (analyzing economics of switching costs, lock-in, de facto standards, and competitive need for compatibility).