No. 18-956 ================================================================================================================ In The Supreme Court of the United States --------------------------------- --------------------------------- GOOGLE LLC, Petitioner, v. ORACLE AMERICA, INC., Respondent. --------------------------------- --------------------------------- On Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court Of Appeals For The Federal Circuit --------------------------------- --------------------------------- BRIEF OF 72 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SCHOLARS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONER --------------------------------- --------------------------------- PAMELA SAMUELSON CATHERINE CRUMP UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Counsel of Record BERKELEY, SCHOOL OF LAW SAMUELSON LAW, 892 Simon Hall TECHNOLOGY & PUBLIC Berkeley, CA 94720 POLICY CLINIC UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, SCHOOL OF LAW 353 Boalt Hall Berkeley, CA 94720 (510) 292-6860 [email protected] ================================================================================================================ COCKLE LEGAL BRIEFS (800) 225-6964 WWW.COCKLELEGALBRIEFS.COM i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ................................. iv INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ......................... 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .............................. 1 ARGUMENT ........................................................ 3 I. This Court’s Precedents, the Text of the Copyright Act, and Sound Copyright Policy Require the Exclusion of Program Inter- faces from Copyright’s Scope ...................... 3 A. This Court Originated the Exclusion of Systems, Methods, and Their Constitu- ent Elements from the Scope of Copy- right Protection .................................... 6 B. Congress Codified the Well-Established Exclusion of Systems and Methods in § 102(b) ................................................. 11 C. The Federal Circuit’s Oracle Decision Ig- nored the § 102(b) System/Method Exclu- sions ..................................................... 12 1. The Method and System Exclusions of § 102(b) Avert Patent/Copyright Overlaps .......................................... 14 2. Unprotectable Elements in Computer Programs Must Be Filtered Out Be- fore Assessing Infringement .............. 15 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued Page 3. Methods and Systems Are Part of Program Structure, Sequence, and Organization, so SSO Obscures Ra- ther Than Clarifies Expressive As- pects of Software ............................. 16 D. Key Post-1976 Act Decisions Follow Baker in Excluding Methods, Systems, and Their Constituent Elements from Copyright’s Scope ................................ 17 E. Consistent with Baker and § 102(b), Program Interfaces Should Be Consid- ered Unprotectable Procedures, Meth- ods, or Systems .................................... 21 II. The Federal Circuit’s Merger Analysis Is Irreconcilable with Baker and Other Per- suasive Decisions ....................................... 22 A. The Federal Circuit’s Analysis of the Merger Doctrine Is at Odds with Baker in Three Key Respects .......................... 24 B. The Merger Doctrine Provides a Sound Basis for Holding That Program Inter- faces That Enable Compatibility Are Uncopyrightable ................................... 27 C. The Federal Circuit Ignored the District Court’s Fact Findings That Supported Its Holding That the Interfaces at Issue Were Unprotectable Under the Merger Doctrine ................................................ 31 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS—Continued Page D. The District Court Properly Held That Names and Short Phrases Are Not Pro- tectable by Copyright ........................... 32 CONCLUSION ..................................................... 34 APPENDIX: List of Amici .......................................... 1a iv TABLE OF AUTHORITIES Page CASES Aldrich v. Remington Rand, Inc., 52 F. Supp. 732 (N.D. Tex. 1942) ....................................................... 11 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014) ................................................................ 16 Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., 714 F.2d 1240 (3d Cir. 1983) ................... 28, 29 Arica Inst., Inc. v. Palmer, 970 F.2d 1067 (2d Cir. 1992) ........................................................................ 22 Atari Games Corp. v. Nintendo of Am., Inc., 975 F.2d 832 (Fed. Cir. 1992) ......................... 3, 14, 15, 29 ATC Distribution Group v. Whatever It Takes Transmissions & Parts, Inc., 402 F.3d 700 (6th Cir. 2005) ................................................................. 33 Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1880) .................... passim Bateman v. Mnemonics, Inc., 79 F.3d 1532 (11th Cir. 1996) ............................................................. 4, 30 Bikram’s Yoga College of India, L.P. v. Evolation Yoga, LLC, 803 F.3d 1032 (9th Cir. 2015) ......... 17, 18 Brief English Systems, Inc. v. Owen, 48 F.2d 555 (2d Cir. 1931) ........................................................... 11 Computer Assocs. Int’l, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992) ............................................ passim Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) ...................... 13 Griggs v. Perrin, 49 F. 15 (C.C.N.D.N.Y. 1892) ........... 11 Ho v. Taflove, 648 F.3d 489 (7th Cir. 2011) ............. 2, 18 v TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—Continued Page Hutchins v. Zoll Med. Corp., 492 F.3d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2007) ................................................................... 3 King v. Burwell, 135 S. Ct. 2480 (2015) ............... 12, 13 Lexmark Int’l, Inc. v. Static Control Components, Inc., 387 F.3d 522 (6th Cir. 2004) ................ 29, 30, 33 Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int’l, Inc., 49 F.3d 807 (1st Cir. 1995), aff’d by an equally di- vided Court, 516 U.S. 233 (1996) (per cur- iam) .............................................................. 19, 20, 21 Mazer v. Stein, 347 U.S. 201 (1954) ............................ 15 MiTek Holdings, Inc. v. Arce Eng’g Co., 89 F.3d 1548 (11th Cir. 1996) ................................................. 3 Mitel v. Iqtel, 124 F.3d 1366 (10th Cir. 1997) ............. 33 Morrissey v. Procter & Gamble Co., 379 F.2d 675 (1st Cir. 1967) .......................................................... 25 Palmer v. Braun, 287 F.3d 1325 (11th Cir. 2002) ....... 18 Perris v. Hexamer, 99 U.S. 674 (1879) ...................... 6, 7 Sega Enters. Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992) .................................................. passim Sony Computer Entm’t, Inc. v. Connectix Corp., 203 F.3d 596 (9th Cir. 2000) .................................... 19 Southco, Inc. v. Kanebridge Corp., 390 F.3d 276 (3d Cir. 2004) (en banc) ..................................... 32, 33 Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 (1990) ........................ 14 vi TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—Continued Page TrafFix Devices, Inc. v. Marketing Displays, Inc., 532 U.S. 23 (2001) ................................................... 25 Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Cong. Int’l, 293 F.3d 791 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc) ........................... 26 CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8 ........................................... 22 STATUTES 17 U.S.C. § 102(b) ................................................ passim RULES 37 C.F.R. § 202.1 ................................................... 33, 34 OTHER AUTHORITIES Brief Amici Curiae of American Committee for Interoperable Systems (ACIS) and Computer & Communications Association in Support of Respondent, Lotus Dev. Corp. v. Borland Int’l, Inc., 516 U.S. 233 (1996) (No. 94-2003)............... 6, 22 BSA Foundation, Software: Growing US Jobs and the GDP, https://software.org/wp-content/ uploads/2019SoftwareJobs.pdf ................................. 1 Copyright Law Revision: Hearings on S. 597 before the Subcomm. on Patents, Trademarks, & Copyrights of the S. Comm. on the Judici- ary, 90th Cong. (1967) (statement of Arthur R. Miller) ...................................................................... 14 vii TABLE OF AUTHORITIES—Continued Page Paul Goldstein, Goldstein on Copyright (2015) ......... 27 H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 (1976) ..................................... 13 National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, Final Report (1979) ................................................................. 30, 31 Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright (2019) ................................................. 27 S. Rep. No. 94-473 (1975) ............................................ 13 Pamela Samuelson, Reconceptualizing Copy- right’s Merger Doctrine, 63 J. Copyright Soc’y U.S.A. 417 (2016) ..................................................... 22 Pamela Samuelson, The Story of Baker v. Sel- den: Sharpening the Distinction Between Authorship and Invention, in Intellectual Property Stories (Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss & Jane C. Ginsburg eds. 2005) ............................... 7, 10 Pamela Samuelson, Why Copyright Law Ex- cludes Systems and Processes from the Scope of Its Protection, 85 Tex. L. Rev. 1921 (2007) .... 11, 14 U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 33,Works Not Protected by Copyright (2017), https://www. copyright.gov/circs/circ33.pdf ................................. 34 U.S. Copyright Office, Circular Update Guide, https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circular-update- guide.pdf .................................................................. 34 U.S. Copyright Office, Compendium of U.S. Copy- right Office Practices (3d ed. 2015) ......................... 27 1 INTEREST