EU's top court: APIs can't be copyrighted, would 'monopolise ideas'

By Thom Holwerda, submitted by PLan on 2012-05-02 22:32:15

"The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that application programming interfaces and other functional characteristics of computer software are not eligible for copyright protection. Users have the right to examine computer software in order to clone its functionality - and vendors cannot override these user rights with a license agreement, the court said." Bravo. A landmark ruling, for sure. If the US courts decide in favour of Oracle in the Google-Oracle case, Europe would instantly become an even friendlier place for technology companies.

45

Recent related stories - Google said to face new antitrust probe over display ads - 2013-05-23 - Tim Cook testifies for Congress about tax avoidance - 2013-05-21 - New Zealand bans software patents - 2013-05-09 - Motorola warned by EU over patent abuse against Apple - 2013-05-07 - UK to investigate aggressive in-application purchasing - 2013-04-13 - More related articles

 

News	Features	Interviews
Blog	Contact	Editorials