Application Programming Interfaces (API): A Primer and Discussion of Oracle America v. Google

In 2010 Oracle America, Inc., filed suit against Google, Inc., in the Northern District of
California (Case No. C 10–03561) (Alsup, J.), and alleged that Google infringed Oracles’
copyright in its Java Application Programming Interface (“API”). The parties and the Court
agreed that everyone was and remains free to program in the Java language itself, and that
Google was free to use the Java language to write its own API. However, while Google took
care to provide fresh line-by-line implementations in 97 percent of the Java API, it generally
replicated the overall name organization and functionality of 37 packages in the Java API (three
percent).

Constitutional Copyright Policy Applied to Collage and Appropriation Art in the Digital Age

Artists have a long history of drawing on society’s body of learning and knowledge to
animate their imaginations and dreams, often without asking for permission before they
incorporate another’s work into their own. It is a practice that has existed as long as art itself.
Whether the artist use of another’s work consists of creating variations or incorporating salient
aspects of the work, the artist’s goal is usually the effective transformation of the borrowed
pieces into a new work of art.