EU’s top court: APIs can’t be copyrighted, would ‘monopolise ideas’

“The European Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday that application programming interfaces and other functional characteristics of computer software are not eligible for copyright protection. Users have the right to examine computer software in order to clone its functionality – and vendors cannot override these user rights with a license agreement, the court said.” Bravo. A landmark ruling, for sure. If the US courts decide in favour of Oracle in the Google-Oracle case, Europe would instantly become an even friendlier place for technology companies.

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