> Even if fair use is established in this case, the door has been left wide open to hordes of API copyright trolls
FYI, this is not actually the case; this case established no precedent for copyrightable APIs.
Because of the history of this case (it originally involved patents as well), it was appealed to the Federal Circuit, which doesn't normally handle copyright cases.
This was a gift for Oracle since the Federal Circuit loves expanding IP rights, but also helpful to the rest of us because the Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over copyright cases. Future copyright cases will go up through whatever circuit you're in, which will not have to treat the Federal Circuit's ruling as precedent.
Anyone can make any case appealable to the Federal Circuit just by throwing in any claim arising under the patent laws. You can add an obviously bogus and unrelated patent claim in initial filings and then drop it in pre-trial and still guarantee biased CAFC jurisdiction.
You could probably force a random criminal trial into the CAFC with a little creativity. It's really easy to go to CAFC if you want to. And if you're abusing intellectual property law, you really want to because they're corrupt like a Venezuelan payday loan used car dealer.
FYI, this is not actually the case; this case established no precedent for copyrightable APIs.
Because of the history of this case (it originally involved patents as well), it was appealed to the Federal Circuit, which doesn't normally handle copyright cases.
This was a gift for Oracle since the Federal Circuit loves expanding IP rights, but also helpful to the rest of us because the Federal Circuit has no jurisdiction over copyright cases. Future copyright cases will go up through whatever circuit you're in, which will not have to treat the Federal Circuit's ruling as precedent.