When SCOTUS accepted the cert petition, it granted two questions: a) are APIs copyrightable and b) if they are, is Google's use fair. Breyer's opinion explicitly lays this out, but doesn't explore API copyrightability any further than "assume it is for this discussion."
Playing Kremlinology here, it feels like Breyer originally had an opinion that explained that APIs were not copyrightable, but sacrificed that section of the opinion to build a 6-2 majority. It's really weird that the opinions took so long to come out for how simple they end up being--why is this coming it in early April instead of early/mid February if it's written like this? My supposition is that there was a much more sharply divided court, running a 3-3-2 or 4-2-2 opinion, and by dropping the discussion of whether or not the APIs were copyrightable and instead saying "it's at best thin copyright" (i.e., it's copyrightable but good luck ever winning infringement) the opinions collapsed down into a more simple outcome. One thing's for sure: this is the case I'm most interested in finding out all the backroom discussions that went on here.
Thomas/Alito get wrong that computer programs are an expression in every form, not invention in any way. Patent law does this too I'd reckon. They then refuse to do the work it takes to determine fair use in this field, which Alsup (and this court) did very well. Open source code being copyright (or copyleft et al) fits in perfectly well with this fair use analysis.
From the market effect part of the opinion, it's Oracle who should be worried if they're different enough from AWS or maybe not if learning any widely-used API means it's a loss if not copied. The WINEs of the world should be safe, Microsoft was never going to bring Win32 or DirectX to Linux.
In my cursory readings about merger doctrine, it's been around for decades, but hasn't been widely adopted by courts, and the justices by little surprise couldn't agree (3-3 or 4-2). The open source lawyers love it, but that means little. Fair use is about as good as it was ever really going to get for the foreseeable future. The industry is just going to have to settle for this or maybe pool it's copyrights like OIN does for patents.
Playing Kremlinology here, it feels like Breyer originally had an opinion that explained that APIs were not copyrightable, but sacrificed that section of the opinion to build a 6-2 majority. It's really weird that the opinions took so long to come out for how simple they end up being--why is this coming it in early April instead of early/mid February if it's written like this? My supposition is that there was a much more sharply divided court, running a 3-3-2 or 4-2-2 opinion, and by dropping the discussion of whether or not the APIs were copyrightable and instead saying "it's at best thin copyright" (i.e., it's copyrightable but good luck ever winning infringement) the opinions collapsed down into a more simple outcome. One thing's for sure: this is the case I'm most interested in finding out all the backroom discussions that went on here.