In an unsurprising ruling today, the Supreme Court balanced a little of the good it did last week by denying Google's appeal against Oracle in the matter of the copyrightability of APIs. The case will now be returned to the lower courts to hear Google's fair use defenses.
While the decision was foreshadowed by the amicus brief delivered by the Solicitor General a month ago, it's still bad news for 21st century developers and open communities. Denying the appeal gives corporations with a 20th century mindset the ability to require permission from developers seeking to innovate on top of their platforms. Instead of being able to just assume that use -- especially re-implementation -- of an API is OK, developers will now need to avoid any API that is not explicitly licensed as open.
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