Menu
8. Interoperability as it relates to copyrightability
|
The district court found that Google had no choice but to provide the same Java command system, and to use the same names, taxonomy, and functional specifications, in order to ensure that some pre-Android Java code would run on Android. (Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., supra, 872 F.Supp.2d, at 1000.) The district court stated that "Google replicated what was necessary to achieve a degree of interoperability—but no more, taking care . . . to provide its own implementations." (Ibid.) In doing so, the district court relied on two other Ninth District decisions: Sega Enterprises. Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., supra, 977 F.2d 1510; and Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix, Corp. (2000) 203 F.3d 596.
The appellate court ruled that while the programs at issue in both Sega and Sony included some "unprotected functional elements," those elements did not remove copyright protection from the "entire work." (Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., supra, 750 F.3d 1339 at 1370.) The Ninth Circuit recognizes that "both the literal and non-literal components of a software program are eligible for copyright protection." (Ibid., citing Johnson Controls, supra, 886 F.2d at 1175.) Google's use of Oracle's Java APIs was intended to facilitate application development "leveraging Java for its existing base of developers." (Id. at 1371.) This implicates fair use, according to the appellate court, but "it is irrelevant to the copyrightability of Oracle's declaring code and organization of the API packages." (Id. at 1372.) Even if Java had reached industry-standard status, it is still protected by copyright. (Practice Management Information Corp. v. American Medical Association (1997) 121 F.3d 516, 520 n.8.) 9. Fair use |