INTRODUCTION
The recent decision of Oracle v. Google by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has posed some severe concern for the Software industry. The decision of the court to grant copyright protection to the Java Application Programme Interface (API) is seen by many as a divergence from the traditional copyright policy of keeping ideas free as the building block of creativity as laid down in Baker v. Seldon over a century ago.
What concerns many is the tendency of the court to encroach into functional areas which were earlier left copyright free.
PRE ORACLE SCENARIO
One of the most landmark judgments in this field is the case of Computer Associates International Inc. v. Altai Inc. where the court had evolved the
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This would result in “X” monopolizing the industry as far as the particular sets of codes are concerned which is totally contrary to the underlying objective of Copyright law .
The setting of such a high standard would defeat the purpose of Copyright law, so the correct approach is to appoint an expert and determine whether more alternatives could have been contemplated or known to the alleged infringer. Appointment of an expert would ensure that at least a reasonably proficient programmer could have contemplated many alternatives. This would ensure fairness while holding the infringer liable for
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But the court has erred in applying many of the basic concepts of the copyright law as well as in the application of various precedents. As stated earlier, the court went wrong in splitting the Altai test and treating the traditional copyrightability doctrines of Merger and Scenes a faire under infringement analysis. Court also erred in trying to find out protectable elements in functional areas of computer programmes, which is the realm of patent law and not copyright law.
The freedom to re implement and extend the API’s had played a key role in the progress of the software industry. It had helped in creation of new compatible softwares and compatible API’s helps users to switch platforms easily and without incurring any cost. The judgment has far stretched consequences; as many argue that the decision will upset the encouragement of inter operability and competition in the computer programming