Can APIs be copyrighted?

The great billion dollar sumo match between Oracle and Google has been winding its way through the courts and is just about to reach the final round where the US Supreme Court will decide, among other things, whether an API can be copyrighted. There are a number of nuances to the case including accusations of pure plagiarism, but the tantalizing question about APIs and whether they might be copyrightable is giving programmers and their good friends, the lawyers, something to argue about for many billable hours.

On one side of the debate are programmers who are wondering if there’s one more legal gotcha that they’ve got to worry about when writing their code. Is this another reason to sit through more meetings with more lawyers? On the other side are the very same programmers who are putting in long days creating wonderful APIs and want to be rewarded with control over their baby. In other words, it’s an opportunity for the same lawyers to validate the programmers’ creativity and bring in licensing fees.

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