> That said, this case does establish a precedent that if your copying of an API is primarily for purposes of matching an interface so that developers can reimplement it, you're in fair use territory:
>> Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment.
It's even weaker than you think. It was important that Google's use of Java's API was on a non-competing product. It's still quite up in the air what happens if you provide a generic library using your competitor's API without licensing it from them.
B) Google isn't accused of copying J2ME when you get down to it. The parts that make ME distinct from SE weren't reimplemented in Android's Harmony fork (looking strongly at javax.microedition), and a lot of packages that SE implemented that ME didn't were present in Android.
>> Google copied these lines not because of their creativity or beauty but because they would allow programmers to bring their skills to a new smartphone computing environment.
It's even weaker than you think. It was important that Google's use of Java's API was on a non-competing product. It's still quite up in the air what happens if you provide a generic library using your competitor's API without licensing it from them.