While I believe that it would be better for society if the court sides with Google, I personally think that APIs can be a creative work, and thus would have copyright protection under the law. However one of Google's arguments is that Oracle is trying to use copyright to acquire a patent-like right, referencing the case of Baker v. Selden[0]. Despite being from 1879(!) I found this case to be especially relevant and I'm quite interested to see how the court will consider it into their opinion.
In his arguments, Oracle's lawyer argues that declaring code is not distinguishable from implementing code and thus deserves all the same copyright protections. As a programmer I find this argument quite unconvincing, as there is clearly a technical distinction in many systems, see: .h files, dynamic linking, etc.
While I believe that it would be better for society if the court sides with Google, I personally think that APIs can be a creative work, and thus would have copyright protection under the law. However one of Google's arguments is that Oracle is trying to use copyright to acquire a patent-like right, referencing the case of Baker v. Selden[0]. Despite being from 1879(!) I found this case to be especially relevant and I'm quite interested to see how the court will consider it into their opinion.
In his arguments, Oracle's lawyer argues that declaring code is not distinguishable from implementing code and thus deserves all the same copyright protections. As a programmer I find this argument quite unconvincing, as there is clearly a technical distinction in many systems, see: .h files, dynamic linking, etc.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_v._Selden