Mult discutatul caz Java a luat o întorsătură cel puțin supărătoare pentru ceea ce poate însemna pe viitor dezvoltarea software. Deși încă nu au fost definitivate aspectele de țin strict de fair use, s-a exprimat foarte clar că API-urile sunt protejate de drepturile de autor, atât în ceea ce privește codul sursă al acestora cât și structura, succesiunea și organizarea celor 37 de librării Java (API packages).

Decizia ar avea efecte asupra a tot ceea ce înseamnă open -source și inovație în general, EFF nuanțând recent că libertata de a reimplementa și extinde API-urile existente reprezintă cheia progresului atât în dezvoltarea de produse hardware cât și software. Cu un accent mult mai pronunțat pe necesitatea compatibilității software, sunt aduse următoarele explicații – “When programmers can freely reimplement or reverse engineer an API without the need to negotiate a costly license or risk a lawsuit, they can create compatible software that the interface’s original creator might never have envisioned or had the resources to create. Moreover, compatible APIs enable people to switch platforms and services freely, and to find software that meets their needs regardless of what browser or operating system they use.”

Nu mi-am format încă o opinie, cel puțin nu una definitivă și este și greu ce-i drept, având în vedere că argumentele Google, bazate în mare parte pe necesitatea interoperabilității/compatibilității software, sunt aduse într-un caz ce privește dezvoltarea unui produs incompatibil cu însăși platforma Java. “Deși Android folosește limbajul Java, este indiscutabil că Android nu este compatibil în general cu Java. Așa cum Oracle a arătat, Google a dezvoltat Android chiar pentru a fi incompatibil cu plaftorma Java, astfel încât aplicațiile scrise/dezvoltate pe aceasta să nu funcționeze pe Java. ”

Dincolo de aceste aspecte, este oricum un caz dificil, în care opiniile, deși susținute, pot fi multiple și cu potențial fluctuant, putând și noi afirma, întocmai ca judecătorii din acest caz, că “application of copyright law in the computer context is often a difficult task”.

Înainte de a discuta și analiza concluziile Curții de Apel federale, este important să notăm ceea ce instanța inferioară a reținut în cazul Java:

– niciun rând din ceea ce se numește “declaring code” NU poate fi protejat de dreptul de autor, din cauza faptului că ideea și expresia acesteia s-au absorbit/au format un tot (n. înțelegându-se prin aceasta că subiect al disputei privea expresia (materializarea) unei idei, cu care această expresie făcea corp comun, neputându-se identifica care este ideea și care materializarea acesteia);

– codul declarat (declaring code) nu poate fi protejat de dreptul de autor întrucât este format din scurte fraze (corespondentul acelor simple date exceptate de la protecția dreptului de autor);

– toate detaliile/componentele SSO (structure, sequence, organization) sunt lipsite de protecție întrucât reprezintă o metode de funcționare;

– în analiză s-a ținut cont de necesitatea interoperabilității invocate de Google.

Decizia Curții de Apel a contrazis aproape în întregime ceea ce se reținuse inițial, stabilindu-se că API-urile sunt de fapt protejate de drepturile de autor pentru că reprezintă o expresie protejabilă și pentru că ar fi putut fi scrise și organizate într-o mulțime de alte moduri pentru a obține aceleași funcții. Asta foarte pe scurt.

Decizia o puteți vizualiza mai jos împreună cu câteva extrase prin care am încercat să notez esențialul. Am mai uploadat și argumentele celor care au susținut compania Google, concretizate în documentul “Corrected Brief of Amici Curiae Computer Scientist in support of Defendant- Cross Appelant”, semnat de Electronic Frontier Foundation și NYU School of Law.

1. The Java Platform include the Java development kit, javac compiler, tools and utilities, runtime programs, class libraries (API packages), and Java virtual machine.

2. Oracle’s collection of API packages is like a library, each package is lke a bookshelf in the library, each class is like a book on the shelf, and each method is like a how-to chapter in a book. There are 37 Java API packages at issue in this appeal, tree of which are the core packages identified by the district court. Each package include two types of source code – declaring code and implementing code.

3. Google agrees that the accused lines of code and comments came from the copyrighted material but contends that the amounts involved were so neglijable as to the minimis and thus should be excused.

4. Although the parties agree that Oracle’s packages meet the originality requirement, they disagree as to the proper interpretation and application of Section 102(b):

“(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”

Google suggests that wherein Section 102(a) grants copyright protection to original works, Section 102 (b) takes it away if the work has a functional component. Congress emphasized that Section 102 (b) in no way contracts the scope of copyright protection. In assessing copyrightability the court is required to ferret out expressive aspects of a work and then separate protectable expression from unprotectable ideas, facts, processes, and methods of operation.

5. The Ninth Circuit has endorsed an abstraction-filtration-comparison test that rejects the notion that anything that performs a function is necessarily uncopyrightable – “Although an element of a work may be characterized as a method of operation, that element may nevertheless contain expression that is eligible for copyright protection.”

6. Merger doctrine – When there are a limited number of ways to express an idea, the idea is said to merge with its expression, and the expression becomes unprotected. However, unique arrangement of computer program expression does not merge with the process so long as alternate expression are available. The evidence showed that Oracle had unlimited options as to the selection and arrangement of 7.000 lines Google copied.

7. Of course, once Sun/Oracle created “java.lang.Math.max”, programmers who want to use that particular package have to call it by that name. But nothing prevented Google from writing its own declaring code, along with its own implementing code, to achieve the same result. In such circumstances, the chosen expression simply does not merge eith the idea being expressed.

8.The District Court also found that Oracle’s declaring code consists of uncopyrightable short phrases. Copyright protection never extends to names or short phrases as a matter of law. But the relevant question of copyrightablity is not whether the work ar issue contains short phrases – as literary works often do, but, rather, whether those phrases are creative. Even a short phrase may command copyright protection if it exhibit sufficient creativity.

9. Scenes a Faire doctrine provides that expressive elements of a work of authorship are not entitled to protection against infringement if they are standard, stock or common to a topic, or if they necessarily follow a common theme or setting. Google and some amici refer to this doctrine contending that, because programmers have become accustomed to and comfortable using the grouping in the Java API packages, those groupings are so commonplace as to be indispensable to the expression of an acceptable programming plaftorm.

10. Google’s reliance on the doctrine above are premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the doctrine. Like merger, the focus of the scenes a faire doctrine is on the circumstances presented to the creator, not the copier. THe court’s analytical focus must be upon the external factors that dictated Sun’s selection of classes, methods and code, not uopn what Google encountered at the time it chose to copy those groupings and that code.

11. The disctrict court found that SSO of the Java API packages is creative and original, but nevertheless held that it is a system or method of operation and therefore cannot be copyrighted.

12. Although an element of a work may be characterized as a method of operation, that element may nevertheless contain expression that is eligible for copyright protection. Section 102(b) does not preclude protection for particular expression of that system. If we were to accept the disctrict court’s suggestion that a computer program is uncopyrightable simply because is carries out pre-assigned functions, no computer program si protectable and that result contradicts Congress’s express intent to provide copyrihgt protection to computer programs.

13. In Sega case the Court concluded that dissambly of copyright object code is, as a matter of law, a fair use of the copyrighted work if such dissambly provides the only means of acces to those elements of the code that are not protected by copyright and the copier has a legitimate reason for seeking such access.

14. Google’s interoperability arguments are irrelevant to copyrightability. Sega case was focused on fair use not on copyrightablity. This is not the case where Google reverse -engineered Oracle’s Java packages to gain acces to unprotected functional elements contain therein. As the former Register of Copyrights of US pointed out in his amicus curiae, had Google reverse engineered the programming packages to figure out the ideas and functionality or the original, and then created its own structure and its own literal code, Oracle would have no remedy under copyright law whatsoever.

15. Google suggested that it was entitled to copy the Java API packeges because they had become the effective industry standard. The court rejected the argumetn that a work that later becomes the indutry standard is uncopyrightable. Google was free to develop its own API packages and to lobby programmers to adopt them.

16. Fair use. Googel argued that a remand to decide fair use is pointless and that Google’s commercial use of Oracle’s work in a market where Oralce already competed was not fair use.

17. The fair use doctrine has been referred to as the most troublesome in the whole law of copyright. Fair use is a mixed question of law and fact. The court concluded: This is not a case in which the record contains sufficient factual findings upon which we could base a de novo assessment of Google’s affirmative defence of fair use. Accordingly, we remand this question to the district court for further proceedings. On remand, the district court should revisit and revise its jury instruction on fair use consistent with this opinion as to provide the jury with a clear and appropriate picture of the fair use defence.