"The fact that this ruling will not be enforced by the European judicial system has about no relevance to software companies."
Again it will likely not be enforced in the rest of the world (only USA). I would say that fact is relevant to software/hardware companies. For example if Oracle would actually succeed and phone manufactures would have to pay a fee to Oracle i guess it makes all the difference if that only applies to USA or the whole world.
But as already explained SUN CEO said Google didn't steal any APIs from them and i would imagine any sane jury will say OK judges judged APIs can be copyrighted in USA but in Google case copyright holder didn't prevent them to use them freely as they choose.
For any future rulings i hope individual cases where only compatibility is at stake jury members in USA courts will often choose compatibility over bluff. But i guess now that USA Judges added this additional burden and FUD we will just have to wait and see how individual cases presented to the USA courts will be ruled.
Re: Europe, Google, Oracle and linux
Again it will likely not be enforced in the rest of the world (only USA). I would say that fact is relevant to software/hardware companies. For example if Oracle would actually succeed and phone manufactures would have to pay a fee to Oracle i guess it makes all the difference if that only applies to USA or the whole world.
But as already explained SUN CEO said Google didn't steal any APIs from them and i would imagine any sane jury will say OK judges judged APIs can be copyrighted in USA but in Google case copyright holder didn't prevent them to use them freely as they choose.
For any future rulings i hope individual cases where only compatibility is at stake jury members in USA courts will often choose compatibility over bluff. But i guess now that USA Judges added this additional burden and FUD we will just have to wait and see how individual cases presented to the USA courts will be ruled.