Jeebus, They Are Claiming that API's are Copyrightable?

That appears to be the jury ruling in the Oracle-Google lawsuit:

In what could be a major blow to Android, Google's mobile operating system, a San Francisco jury issued a verdict today that the company broke copyright laws when it used Java APIs to design the system. The ruling is a partial victory for Oracle, which accused Google of violating copyright law.

But the jury couldn't reach agreement on a second issue—whether Google had a valid "fair use" defense when it used the APIs. Google has asked for a mistrial based on the incomplete verdict, and that issue will be briefed later this week.

The results aren't clear going forward. Both sides are going to write briefs arguing how to proceed from here, with Google likely arguing the verdict needs to be thrown out, while Oracle somehow tries to hang on to its win on question 1A, the fundamental question about whether Google infringed copyright.

No one knows the jury's internal deliberations, so it's speculative to guess at what led to the partial verdict. But one reason could be the unusual construction of this trial. Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing the case, ruled that the case would be decided by a jury of 12, which is large for a civil case and increases the possibility of having one or more "holdout" jurors. Alsup also ruled that the jury must decide unanimously, a requirement for criminal cases that's not always imposed on civil juries.

Now let's be clear here: The judge apparently instructed the jury to assume that APIs are copyrightable, in order for them to make decisions about the facts, but that decision will actually be rendered by the judge later. (Yeah, the law is a bitch)

Speaking as a non-lawyer and non-computer programmer, if this stands, it stands a very good chance to shut down much of the software industry in the United States, because any supplier of a platform, at any time, on the machine that you owe, could ban, or demand usurious licensing fees, for any 3^rd party software.

So Microsoft could demand fees from (for example) Open Office in order to run on Windows.

In any case, the substantive ruling is the judge's and that is clearly subject to appeal, you appeal on the law, not the adjudicated facts, so the final decision will likely be either the court of appeal of SCOTUS.

Yet another example of just how %$#ed up our IP system is.