Harvard Journal of Law & Technology Volume 31, Special Issue Spring 2018 RISE OF THE API COPYRIGHT DEAD?: AN UPDATED EPITAPH FOR COPYRIGHT PROTECTION OF NETWORK AND FUNCTIONAL FEATURES OF COMPUTER SOFTWARE Peter S. Menell* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 307 II. COPYRIGHT PROTECTION FOR COMPUTER SOFTWARE 1.0 ........... 313 A. A Personal Account .................................................................. 313 B. Setting the Stage ....................................................................... 314 1. The Intellectual Property Backdrop: Legislation and Legislative History .......................................................... 315 2. Network Economics .............................................................. 318 3. The Industrial Backdrop ........................................................ 319 C. The API Copyright War ........................................................... 321 1. Jurisprudence ......................................................................... 322 i. The Early Years .................................................................. 323 ii. The Modern Software Copyright Era ................................ 326 2. Legislative Developments ..................................................... 341 D. The End of the First API Copyright War and the Logic of the Intellectual Property System ........................................ 342 III. COPYRIGHT PROTECTION FOR COMPUTER SOFTWARE 2.0: THE ORACLE WAVE ....................................................................... 343 A. The Technological and Industrial Context ............................... 345 1. The Java Story ....................................................................... 346 i. The Corporate Environment: Sun Microsystems in the 1980s and 1990s ................................................. 346 ii. Development of Java.......................................................... 347 iii. The Setting Sun ................................................................. 355 2. Google, the Mobile Computing Revolution, and Development of Android ................................................ 357 3. Oracle’s Acquisition of Sun Microsystems ........................... 372 * Koret Professor of Law and Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, University of California at Berkeley School of Law. I thank Jonathan Band, Dylan Hadfield- Menell, Justin Hughes, Mark Lemley, David Nimmer, Tim Simcoe, and Christopher Yoo as well as participants at various presentations (Boston University School of Law, Harvard Law School, New York University School of Law, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, U.C.L.A. School of Law) for comments on earlier drafts. Alex Barata, Louise Decoppet, Amit Elazari, and Andrea Hall provided excellent research assistance. 306 Harvard Journal of Law & Technology [Vol. 31 B. The Oracle v. Google Litigation ............................................... 375 1. Oracle’s Complaint and Pretrial Case Management .............. 375 2. 2012 Trial .............................................................................. 378 3. Federal Circuit Appeal .......................................................... 386 i. Copyrightability .................................................................. 388 a. Declaring Code ............................................................... 388 b. SSO of the API Packages ............................................... 389 ii. Fair Use ............................................................................. 390 4. Interlocutory Certiorari Petition ............................................ 390 5. 2016 Fair Use Trial ............................................................... 391 i. Opening Arguments ............................................................ 393 ii. Google’s Case in Chief ...................................................... 395 iii. Oracle’s Case in Chief ..................................................... 400 iv. Google’s Rebuttal ............................................................. 404 v. Closing Arguments ............................................................. 405 vi. Jury Verdict ....................................................................... 410 6. The Road Ahead .................................................................... 410 C. The Current Murky State of API Copyright Protection ........... 414 IV. THE LAW AND ECONOMICS OF API COPYRIGHT PROTECTION .................................................................................. 416 A. Legal Analysis .......................................................................... 417 1. Overarching Principles .......................................................... 418 2. Critique of the Federal Circuit Copyrightability Decision .......................................................................... 421 i. Misinterpretation of the Copyright Act ............................... 422 a. Misreading Section 102 .................................................. 422 b. Legislative Intent and Purpose ....................................... 424 ii. Misreading Ninth Circuit Jurisprudence ........................... 427 a. Viability of the Lotus Decision in the Ninth Circuit ....... 427 b. Disregarding the Sega/Sony Decisions ........................... 429 c. Resurrecting the Third Circuit’s Apple/Whelan Decisions .......................................................... 431 iii. Conflation of Expressive and Technological “Creativity” ............................................................. 433 iv. Overly Rigid Approach to Limiting Doctrines .................. 438 v. Treating API Design as Variable Expression Rather than Unique Function............................................... 442 3. Proper Legal Frameworks for Analyzing Copyright Protection for Computer Software .................................. 443 i. API Design .......................................................................... 444 ii. Computer Code .................................................................. 446 a. Independent Creation ...................................................... 447 b. Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison ................................ 450 Special Issue] API Copyright 307 iii. Other Software Elements .................................................. 451 B. Policy Analysis ......................................................................... 452 1. Economic Analysis of Legal Protection for Computer Software .......................................................................... 452 i. The Public Goods Problem ................................................. 452 ii. Network Externalities ........................................................ 456 2. The Evolution of Software Markets ...................................... 460 3. The Optimality of Limited Copyright Protection for Computer Software ......................................................... 464 4. Impediments to Achieving the Proper Copyright Balance Posed by the Oracle v. Google Litigation ......... 471 V. CONCLUSION ................................................................................ 473 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY .................................................................. 474 APPENDIX B: PRINCIPAL PARTICIPANTS ........................................... 479 APPENDIX C: TIMELINE .................................................................... 482 APPENDIX D: THE 37 JAVA API PACKAGES IMPLEMENTED IN ANDROID ....................................................................................... 486 APPENDIX E: 2016 FAIR USE TRIAL SUMMARY ............................... 489 I. INTRODUCTION As the great Yogi Berra redundantly said, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”1 For IP scholars and practitioners of my generation, Ora- cle Corporation’s lawsuit alleging that Google’s Android mobile plat- form infringes copyright in the Java application program interface (“API”) elements has been a stroll down memory lane.2 Or perhaps less nostalgically for those in the software industry, a zombie horror film set in Silicon Valley.3 1. See YOGI BERRA, THE YOGI BOOK: I DIDN’T SAY EVERYTHING I SAID 9 (1998) (ex- plaining that the déjà vu quotation was inspired by Yankees’ sluggers Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris’s repeated back-to-back home runs in the early 1960s). 2. As Judge Alsup noted in an early ruling in the Oracle litigation, “[t]he term API is slippery.” See Order Partially Granting and Partially Denying Defendant’s Mot. for Sum- mary Judgment on Copyright Claim at 4, Oracle Am., Inc. v. Google Inc., 810 F. Supp. 2d 1002, 1007 (N.D. Cal. 2011) (No. C 10-03561 WHA) (2011 WL 5576228). We will exam- ine the varying and evolving meaning of API throughout this journey. 3. Cf. List of Zombie Films, WIKIPEDIA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ zombie_films [https://perma.cc/TD6M-B36U]. Commentary and news reporting of the Oracle case spoke in dire terms. See, e.g., Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, Oracle v. Google, and the End of Programming as We Know It, COMPUTERWORLD (May 16, 2016), http://www.computerworld.com/article/3070001/application-development/oracle-v-google- and-the-end-of-programming-as-we-know-it.html [https://perma.cc/SY5L-WPZC]; Klint Finley, The Oracle-Google Case Will Decide the Future of Software, WIRED (May 23, 2016), http://www.wired.com/2016/05/oracle-google-case-will-decide-future-software/ [https://perma.cc/6U69-YGJW] (opining