How A Fair Use Win Paved The Way For Competition From Valve’s Steam Deck

By: John Bergmayer (Public Knowledge)

The long rivalry between tech giants Oracle and Google came to an end with a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that reinstated the view that Application Software Interfaces (APIs) – a form of software library – was fair use. Here, Google had written code that was indistinguishable in many ways to existing software published by developer Java, which was intended to help developers working on the new Android platform. In this case, Google’s implementation of Java-like APIs in the system allowed developers to make requests for information or actions that the system would easily understand. However, though the new ‘functional’ code may have been totally different from the original Java code, the programmers still have to call things by the same names in order for the program to work.

The Supreme Court correctly judged that this situation was pro-competitive and legitimate, as copyright law and IP protections are not meant to lock developers into specific proprietary platforms or to prevent the entry of new platforms that can be compatible with powerful incumbents…

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