Some Misconceptions about Software in the Copyright Literature

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Abstract

The technical complexity and functionality of computer programs have made it difficult for courts to apply conventional copyright concepts, such as the idea/expression distinction, in the software copyright case law. This has created fertile ground for significant misconceptions. In this paper, we identify fourteen such misconceptions that arose during the lengthy course of the Google v. Oracle litigation. Most of these misconceptions concern application programming interfaces (APIs). We explain why these misconceptions were strategically significant in Oracle's lawsuit, rebut them, and urge lawyers and computer scientists involved in software copyright litigation to adopt and insist on the use of terminology that is technically sound and unlikely to perpetuate these misconceptions.

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APA

Bloch, J., & Samuelson, P. (2022). Some Misconceptions about Software in the Copyright Literature. In CSLAW 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 Symposium on Computer Science and Law (pp. 131–141). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1145/3511265.3550449

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