The courts continue to get to make copyright and patent law. The latest involves Oracle which is suing Google over Oracle's Application Programming Interface (API) as well as other lesser elements.

The heart of the difference is whether the Java API can be copyrighted or not. Google has been using it in the belief that it was not protected, particularly for Android, Google's operating system for cell phones and tablets. Oracle which acquired the software from Sun Microsystems two years ago, has much to gain if it wins rumored to be as much as a billion dollars.

Oracle's case is that its API is copyrighted along with the underlying software code. Google argues that it can't be copyrighted because the elements of an API are like words, in free and common use.

If it loses, Google would have to eliminate the API or pay Oracle's price (or find a substitute to run the small free apps that are already widely used in Android gadgets).

The case took an odd turn last week, when the judge instructed the jury hearing the suit to assume that the copyright does cover the API but that he would issue his final ruling later in the proceedings. I suspect the jurors will take this to mean the judge has already intervened and made their efforts irrelevant. But that possibility will provide Google a basis to appeal.

Then on Friday, the judge sent aspects of the case to the jury link here. The best current status of the suit is described there in detail. For all the twists and turns, go to Groklaw link here for a daily account in extenso of the arguments.

Then today, a European court ruled in another case that an API is not copyrightable link here. Good for it, blocking the steady expansion of the reach of copyright.

The downside of drug patents is once again evident in this example.

As Andrew Pollack reports in the New York Times, "A combination of two pills proved extremely effective in treating hepatitis C in a small trial, raising hopes among researchers that the disease will be curable without an injected drug that has debilitating side effects." link here

The two companies "owning" the drugs, however, are refusing to enter serious negotiations. Instead, they seem to be guarding their current patent monopolies and the profits generated thereby, while offering the public pablum justifications for not getting on with a deal that seems obvious and hugely in the public interest.

The clinical results are admittedly preliminary, but the implied criticism of current law and practice once again is strong evidence that major modifications of intellectual property law is urgent even as the current political climate offers little likelihood that it will be changed.

Via Dave Backus...with some delay. In brief: some poor guy making t-shirts saying "Eat More Kale" is getting sued by a large restaurant chain whose slogan is "Eat Mor Chikin".

KEVIN J. O'BRIEN writes in the New York Times about companies fighting over patents link here. The plaintiffs have taken to court-shopping by suing in Germany rather than in other jurisdictions. Companies fearful of having their German operations closed down by its courts are moving their operations elsewhere in Europe (Germany might now want to consider changing its law and practice).

The story fails to make the most important point, that patents under the US Constitution are intended to foster innovation. They should be so treated elsewhere. Instead, current company practice in both the US and around the world is to ignore that goal. They treat patents as a thing owned like land and physical objects, (in practice in perpetuity by amending the law to extend their life). Patents then become an important way to increase profits.

Patents and copyrights are happy-land for lawyers who also dominate our politics and write the laws that favor their profession. Candidates need to be asked their views on the issue.

AEI held a session on patents and patent reform building off Launching the Innovation Renaissance. Alex Tabarrok was one of the speakers, taking for his title "Most Innovations in Most Fields Are Not Patented." You can listen to a YouTube of part of his talk and see some related YouTubes at the end. His title says it all link here and link here. The entire conference is to be posted here

Steve Pearlstein writes in the Washington Post about competition in the book selling business link here. He boils the policy issue down to picking your monopolist, Apple or Amazon. That doesn't really frame the choices consumers face.

His frame is either control of the ebook market by Amazon which priced them at $9.99 or by Apple, which raised prices by 30-40 percent through setting a wholesale price and letting retailers set the retail price, incidentally restoring the market in printed books to profitability.

The issue is moot for the moment, since the government has weighed in on the side of low prices but various interests have now gone to court.

Pearlstein leaves out the whole issue of copyright, in the absence of which none of this could have occurred. It is the original monopoly, on the basis of which any other associated monopolies rest. While it is unlikely that Congress will change copyright any time soon, it is important for consumers to know that competitive pricing of books depends on substantially reducing the term of copyright to somewhere between 10 and 20 years.

John Bennett draws our attention to Public Knowledge (.org). They "preserve... the openness of the Internet and the public's access to knowledge; promote... creativity through balanced copyright; and uphold.. and protect... the rights of consumers to use innovative technology lawfully". In the wake of SOPA/PIPA they have started the internet blueprint an effort to crowdsource legislative proposals to protect internet freedoms.

Public Knowledge supports "balanced copyright." I do not: I do not think that any copyright serves the purposes of advancing science and the useful arts laid out in the U.S. Constitution or that it serves any useful economic purpose. However - I'd much rather have balanced copyright than what we have now so I'm delighted to see support Public Knowledge in their effort to take back our internet freedoms.

We make jokes on this blog about what would happen if every word was under copyright and every time you wrote something you had to get a license for each word. So look at Mike Masnick's post over on Techdirt. People make collages of photographs; the individual photographers are mad because they own the individual pictures. The point is: this should be fair use because it is transformative. A collage is an original and transformative use of pictures the same way an essay is an an original and transformative use of words. So this is what we have come to. I could say the same about sampling in music. I guess we must count our blessings and be grateful that language was invented before copyright.

Susan Decker writes in the Washington Post about changing tactics in fighting patent suits, particularly the patent trolls link here.

The crucial paragraph states, "Requesting a government evaluation of whether a patent was properly issued, known as reexamination, is cheaper than a lawsuit and has an easier standard for discrediting a patent than what is allowed before a judge or jury. With a success rate of about 90 percent, companies have almost doubled requests in the past five years, turning the patent office into a reliable forum to shoo away competitors' claims of patent infringement."

The patent office is ostensibly gearing up to handle the burdens of a greater workload so that re-exams will be done more rapidly and professionally. We will have to see how this plays out. Past experience suggests a high level of skepticism, but the game plan sounds good. For details, see the article.