On 01/10/2018 09:47 PM, Paul Wise wrote: > On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 1:13 AM, Milan Kupcevic wrote: > >> It is widely held in the IT industry, and in technical industries in >> general, that interface descriptions and definitions can not be legally >> protected as that would stop development and production of compatible >> replacement parts by third parties. This widely held belief could be >> changed by a court decision or a new law in any given jurisdiction at >> any time. > > As we saw in the Oracle v Google case over the Java APIs, this widely > held belief is not necessarily correct. > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America%2C_Inc._v._Google%2C_Inc. > > The result of the case was that the Java APIs are copyrightable, but > that Google's use of them was fair use. Unfortunately fair use is not > internationally widespread and not the same everywhere it is > implemented. > This case just confirms that the legal protection, so far, has not been successfully enforced. Thus, the widely held belief still stands strong. I'm not a lawyer, and this is not a legal advice. Milan
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