EU court: Reverse engineering OK, API not protected by (c) and more

http://jan.wildeboer.net/2012/05/breaking-european-court-decision-oracle-and-google-should-note/

by jwildeboer • 14 years ago

116 40 14 years ago

jan.wildeboer.net

EU court of Justice decides: Program language, API free to be reimplemented. Reverse engineering also OK, cannot be stopped by license terms. Interesting when compared to Oracle v Google.

sohamsankaran3• 14 years ago

Assuming the US court does end up ruling (even partially) in Oracle's favour, this would serve to make the U.S. an even less attractive location to start a startup than it already is due to current and proposed violations of basic human and civil rights by the government in order to protect content copyright holders (i.e. the interests represented by the MPAA and RIAA)[Citing Kim Dotcom/Megaupload, SOPA/PIPA/CISPA]. I postulate that this might result in a perfect storm of conditions that result in the shifting of the centre of gravity of the startup, and eventually wider entrepreneurial/financial worlds off American shores for the first time in more than a century, perhaps to Europe, due to a more conducive legislative environment, or, more intriguingly, to India or perhaps Brazil (assuming they get their governments in order). The advantages of the Silicon Valley ecosystem are still massive, but they would, in such circumstances, erode over a (not necessarily very long) period of time.

Edit: The page appears to be down, so I've posted the full text on pastebin - http://pastebin.com/6G5vqLj5

ars• 14 years ago

The opposite could happen too. If you want to make sure your APIs are copyrighted then you would stay in the US.

For example it would make it harder for someone to offer a drop in replacement for your cloud based service by replicating your APIs exactly.

Personally I doubt APIs could be copyrighted, but some would find an advantage if they could.

sohamsankaran3• 14 years ago

Right, but I suspect those who would find advantage would be the incumbent market leaders in their respective fields. The truly disruptive startups, the innovators, would be weighted down considerably by such legislation, since they might unknowingly replicate an obvious part of a copyrighted API. The situation would quickly spiral out of control. If that were the case, the copyright-ability of APIs might result in the stagnation of software development itself, in the absolute worst case, though I suspect, as I have previously stated, that people would get around that by relocating to more friendly legislative environments.

pavelkaroukin• 14 years ago

I do not think it will work. If, just for example, Amazon decide to copyright their API and keep their business in USA for copyright protection, another company, who decides to replicate Amazon's API fully will just do it in Europe. Customers probably will not care, since it is internet. Only possible downside here - latency between USA and Europe.

yread• 14 years ago

Since the blog is down here http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&... is the judgment and some commentary: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-02/copyright-can-t-blo...

most important bit:

Consequently, the answer to Questions 1 to 5 is that Article 1(2) of Directive 91/250 must be interpreted as meaning that neither the functionality of a computer program nor the programming language and the format of data files used in a computer program in order to exploit certain of its functions constitute a form of expression of that program and, as such, are not protected by copyright in computer programs for the purposes of that directive.

mbreese• 14 years ago

That's interesting because it goes even further than I'd have expected: that file formats themselves aren't protected. I guess that isn't surprising, since you'd want a market where programs could all compete to operate on the same files, but I don't remember that being talked about before (at least in reference to Oracle vs Google). And that does go to the format of the Java .class files.

I wonder what the EU courts would have to say about an encrypted file format...

robotmay• 14 years ago

Nice to know, as I'm currently reverse engineering API calls for a few organisations in the UK who don't supply their data in easily parsable formats. It's not for anything malicious; I'm actually trying to drive traffic to their sites and help them gain more visitors. Try explaining to non-technical people the benefits of an open API and why they should pay for one :\

jwildeboer2• 14 years ago

I am trying hard to keep the site up, but you guys and gals are hammering the sh*t out of my little vServer ;-)

driverdan• 14 years ago

Throw CloudFlare in front of it.

pella• 14 years ago

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20120502083035371

jasiek2• 14 years ago

So this is interesting. What happens if national (eg. polish) law specifically disallows reverse engineering? Which law takes precedence?

toyg• 14 years ago

ECJ follows EU directives, which take precedence over national law. When individual countries refuse compliance (it happens quite often), an "infraction procedure" is open, which can potentially result in heavy fines for the country.

More often than not, the country could pass a law that complies with the directive in question, then "forget" to enforce it as soon as the original process is terminated in a satisfactory way; individuals would then appeal to the ECJ again and the process would be repeated, this time resulting almost certainly in fines. And so on ad infinitum, or (usually) until the political winds change at the national level.

In almost every case, EU laws and directives take precedence over national law, but the mechanisms to enforce this primacy are still somewhat vague and weak. This is by design: if they had been too clearly stated, most countries would not have signed the treaties. The "plan" was to state the overall principles, then find a way to enact them further down the line. It's a very pragmatic approach, and it's producing results in many areas, but clearly it's not something that, today, will satisfy all individuals in their lifetimes.

grabeh7• 14 years ago

National governments in the EU have a duty to implement EU Directives. If a government implemented a law inconsistent with a directive, the EU would take enforcement action for failure to implement the directive properly.

jwildeboer2• 14 years ago

The rule is simple. EU directives must be implemented in national laws of all EU member states. If Poland fails to implement the directive by such an action a EU violation case would start ultimately leading to consequences.

OTOH this is a tested way to get stuff in laws that are hard to find national support for. Make it an EU directive and explain to your people that "Sorry, but even if we don't like it, we must implement this now." - see EU data retention directive etc.

jasiek2• 14 years ago

What if the law in question has existed before Poland joined the EU?

ojosilva• 14 years ago

Since this is Union Law, and according to the treaties, a party in Poland could escalate such a copyright case to the ECJ, which could then overrule any Polish higher court. The thing is that the ECJ requires (or advices) Poland courts to comply to its decisions, but cannot actually enforce them, which is totally up to the country. So if Poland decided to go on its own on this, theoretically it could since the EU states are sovereign, but in practical terms, and this is a really fuzzy divide, Poland would not do it if it wants to remain a politically "healthy" member of the EU.

eblackburn• 14 years ago

What are the ramifications, if Oracle win in the USA but isn't protected by EU legislation?

grabeh7• 14 years ago

I'm not fully conversant with international copyright treaties, but the Berne Convention to which both the US and various EU countries are signatories to, provides that a work that is protected by copyright in one signatory country will be protected in another country, so the ramifications in terms of creating a divide between the US and non-US countries may not be overly significant.

dmragone2• 14 years ago

The key thing to remember is that the case in front of Judge Alsup in the US Northern District of California is a jury case. It'll be up to people who have no idea how computers work to decide this. Having just served on a jury, I see the value, but in this sort of instance, I am frightened by the possible result.

azylman• 14 years ago

No, the jury will not be deciding on whether or not APIs are copywriteable. Judge Alsup is deciding on that, if necessary. The jury will be deciding on Google's fair use arguments etc.

dmragone2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the correction - though, quite honestly, having met Judge Alsup, I'm not sure this is any better. He hates technology.

excuse-me• 14 years ago

Oracle (and Sun) knew this - that's why these are patents.

The law allowing reverse engineering of APIs and interconnects is well established in the US and Europe and has been for decades. In the US it goes back to Amdhal making plug compatible peripherals for IBMs and the right to reverse engineer is enshrined in an EU directive.

That's why the Oracle case isn't about copyright. They claim to have patents on various concepts of the language. So you are perfectly at liberty to implement a 'while' command with the same function template - you just aren't allowed to use it to do a loop !

EU court: Reverse engineering OK, API not protected by (c) and more

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