Part VI: Everything That’s Old Is New Again (but it’s Still Overruled) Last time, we examined Oracle’s strategy to overcome certain doom under the abstract-filter-compare test: pull back and look at the big picture. In other words, don’t focus on the...
Part V: Oracle Wanted the Court to See the Forest for the Trees Last time, I explained the painstaking “abstraction-filtration-comparison” test (or “AFC test”) that most courts use to determine the extent of copyright protection for computer code. The test is tedious...
Part IV: Why Oracle Needed a New Legal Theory Worse Than Huey Lewis Needed a New Drug Last time, we looked at why half of each Java API “method” wasn’t copyrightable (because there was only one reasonable way to express the functionality) and that the...
Part III: What Happens to Copyright Protection When There’s Only One Reasonable Way to Code Something Through philosophical discussions of motorcycle maintenance, pancakes and old 1980’s TV ads involving peanut butter and chocolate, my last two posts can be...
Part II: When Expression and Function Collide We’re talking about computer code in Oracle v. Google, and computer code is challenging because it’s expressive but also functional. Last time, I explained that when functionality gets mixed up with expression,...
