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[–] FruityPants [S] ago 

TL;DR From court case "Oracle v. Google", it was ruled APIs are copyrightable creations, despite being fundamental to innovations in software development. If you receive a threatening legal letter in regard to an API you implement, get in contact with the EFF.

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[–] magicmu 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

This is terrifying... Just another case of non-technical courts ruling on technical issues; like the article says:

the legal precedents that the Federal Circuit refused to follow, as well as the realities of software development, argue against treating application programming interfaces (APIs) as copyrightable.

I'm definitely not a copyright lawyer, but I am a programmer, and I can know that this does not bode well for the community. I would be interested to know whether it was Oracle or Google that pushed for the copyright (I assume it's Oracle, but the article didn't seem to clearly say)

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[–] FruityPants [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago  (edited ago)

Your assumption was correct. Google implemented it's own API in android that mimics Java's precisely. Oracle were not happy. Oracle v. Google brief

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[–] magicmu 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

That's Oracle for ya... Thanks for the link. Man, that is really unsettling. I can understand why Google chose Java as the base for Android OS when they did, but it seems like it may be time to move on. I heard that in Go 1.5 you can compile native Android applications, so a sea change may be imminent (at least, one can hope)