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Reinventing versus copying

The jury has retired to consider a decision in the case of Google versus Oracle in respect to the Android OS and whether the search-engine giant stole key aspects of Oracles intellectual property.

Normally, a copyright or patent infringement case is pretty simple: did the defendant use the plaintiff's intellectual property without permission or license - yes or no.

However, in this case, the water is a little murkier.

The jury will have to figure out whether the interface to a software routine is covered by copyright.

To clarify -- if I write a routine that adds two numbers together and call it function int addTwo(int num1, int num2) can someone else write their own "clean-room" function that does the same thing with totally different code -- or are they infringing my copyright?

In short, how far up the tree of stepwise refinement does copyright protection apply?

It would seem that right now, the level at which copyright kicks in seems to be rather indistinct and untested.

Clearly, just because someone else has designed and written a wordprocessor, I'm still entitled to do exactly the same thing. At the very highest (almost conceptual) level, copyright does not apply.

As we move down the refinement chain we eventually reach a level where we're talking algorithms. At this point (at least in the USA), it seems that copyright or patent law can kick in and protect certain algorithms.

Descend a little further and you get into the domain of source-code which is where copyright definitely applies -- or does it?

To simply copy a program's source code in its entirely is a clear violation of copyright but what about the inevitably recurring lines of code that will be common to many programs the world over?

void main(void) {

How many C programs contain that line of code?

Clearly such a trivial code segment can't be protected by copyright.

What about an equally trivial line, such as the one we described earlier?

function int addTwo(int num1, int num2)

But hang on -- that second line is effectively an API definition -- the very thing that Oracle is claiming Google used without permission.

Yep, muddy waters!

To be honest, I haven't delved deeply enough into the Google vs Oracle case to form any worthwhile opinion but perhaps this does add extra weight to my claim that copyright laws are rooted and need to be totally rewritten with the technology of the 21st century in mind.

What do readers think? Ought APIs to be protected by copyright?

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