The API apocalypse (APIocalypse?) is deferred, as the jury found that "Google's use of the APIs structure, sequence, and organization fell under fair use."

Google had this to say about the matter.

From here on in, I don't want to talk about the particulars of the case - I'm a Google employee, but my opinion is rooted in both copyright critique and my views as a software engineer.  In fact, I used to work for Oracle, and probably would have resigned over this, to be honest, if I still worked there.

I'm not happy about this.   Don't get me wrong - it is a partial victory for sanity in software.  But it leaves the travesty of applying copyright to APIs unanswered (though I'm not sure, since IANAL, that this case could have resolved anything about what I'm concerned about, since it's a lower-court ruling about specifics).

The issue for me is this: a higher court found that APIs (application programmer interfaces - or in layman's terms, the specification of how to talk to a software library) are subject to copyright.  Fair use means only it's a legitimate exception to what is otherwise copyright-able.  So while I'm glad that this was a legit exemption, the whole underlying theory is problematic... and that has yet to be fixed.

Having APIs (and their "structure and organization") be copyright-able in theory at all is insane.  It's like saying "English grammar is subject to copyright, but if you want to talk to an English speaker, it's cool to use that grammar and lexicon - it's fair use."

No... it's not merely fair use - it's the entire point of language.  If you have to use different names, that's like saying "you can speak English, but you need to use different words when you speak".  That means you're using a different language - specifically defeating the whole purpose of using...well... language.

An API exists for the express purpose of providing a means by which one piece of code can speak to another piece of code.  A public API (which one must rely on to write software on a language like Java, or using someone's supplied libraries) is a protocol - a language (or a specific subset of language, anyway - a local slang, if you will).   Letting us copyright an API strains credulity to the breaking point.

So I'm not convinced it's all over and our industry can breathe again, but at least we can catch a short-breath (until appeals happen, and until this fair-use exemption is used as precedent in other cases).