Friday’s unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel on the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit about Google’s recycling parts of Oracle’s Java software could make a wide variety of innovation expensive or illegal. The ruling fits into a long and unhelpful history of the government creating “intellectual property” where such property didn’t previously exist — and where it’s not needed.
In my first extended rant about intellectual-property overreach in a while, I tee off on Friday's foolish ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturning a lower court's finding that you can't copyright the workings of an API. The CAFC's decision is unfounded and would threaten most reverse engineering as we know it--and it fits into a long and sorry history of inflating intellectual property, both at that court and in Congress.
This particular court's coloring outside the lines ought to be a subject of bipartisan outrage: Republicans can denounce activist judges who take it upon themselves to rewrite the law, while Democracts can decry the massive transfer of wealth to corporate America. Why isn't it?
