Brief of Amici Curiae the Open Source Initiative, Mozilla Corp., and Engine in Support of Petitioner

Abstract

Brief of Amici Curiae the Open Source Initiative, Mozilla Corp., and Engine in Support of Petitioner in Google, Inc. v. Oracle, Inc., No. 14-410 (U.S. Supreme Court)Every year, hundreds of thousands of open source programmers create millions of lines of software code. Because the code is open, it is available for the world to see, learn from, and use under extremely liberal conditions. Open source software has resulted in huge contributions – both to commercial and noncommercial firms and communities – providing upwards of $50 billion in annual revenue. There are over 4.9 billion lines of open source code currently in existence, the estimated value of which exceeds $387 billion.Yet in order for open source to thrive, programmers need to reuse and reimplement existing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) – the technical standards according to which computer programs interoperate with each other. Without such interoperability, open source programs lose much of their value as creative and competitive alternatives to proprietary – or “closed source” – programs. By making the information needed for interoperability available to all and thereby making the choice to switch software both cost-effective and frictionless, APIs ensure that consumers have open source alternatives to proprietary software. In misinterpreting 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) and holding APIs copyrightable, the Federal Circuit struck a severe blow to the future of open source software, limiting its ability to compete within software markets dominated by single proprietary players. Amici ask this Court to grant certiorari and correct this mistake that undermines the constitutional purpose of copyright, the status quo in copyright law, and a significant sector of our high tech economy.Imagine a single company owning the right to control the way appliances plug into electrical outlets. If a company wanted to build a new toaster, no matter how innovative, affordable, or otherwise competitive, it would still need to ask permission from the outlet owner to make the toaster compatible with the wall’s sockets. And if the outlet company already made toasters? Old, clunky, and poorly designed, they would still dominate the market if they were the only appliance able to plug into the wall.This is the power of interoperability – and this is how APIs work. APIs are the outlet sockets of the software world, and those who control them often dictate how software works in particular areas of technology. While some control over APIs is possible under patent law, Congress and this Court have long recognized that the law cannot and should not cede control of such technological “rules of the road” to copyright owners. Both § 102(b)’s exclusion of any “method of operation” from copyright’s purview and the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1879), preclude this outcome.The Federal Circuit’s decision below upends the long-standing status quo that programmers have relied on for decades. It directly contradicts Baker by improperly holding that APIs are not uncopyrightable methods of operation like the accounting tables in that case. APIs are not computer programs, but the Federal Circuit treats them as such. Under the Federal Circuit’s rule, the simple action of saving a word document would no longer be as straightforward as clicking “File” and selecting “Save” because that menu hierarchy would be owned and copyrightable. Every program, open source or closed, would have to create some new way of helping a user save a document instead of adopting the tried and true standards that users already understand. And the inefficient and wasteful consequences of the Federal Circuit’s rule would not be limited to software user interfaces – many of the open source alternatives in cloud computing, mobile mapping, and online encyclopedias could come under legal threat if they tried to create interoperability with the API methods of their competitors. For these reasons, and for the reasons that follow, this Court should grant certiorari.