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Unfortunately the real heart of the case lies in the part with all the math and such. The Supreme Court’s decision in Google v. Oracle might have huge ramifications for the software industry, most importantly because the Supreme Court may be revisiting the copyrightability issue — the question of whether the declaring code and structure, sequence, and organization of the Java APIs are covered by copyright law at all — which hasn’t been in play since 2014.
An API is not exactly a dictionary, but it’s close enough to one that Oracle v. Google poses a huge problem. Technically, you can program in Java without using the 37 Java API packages at issue. But you probably wouldn’t be writing anything useful, since those APIs include java.lang and java.util, basic packages that offer functions like doing math or representing dates and times. I can also technically write this article without any metaphors or similes, but it’s not something that I would want to do, or that anyone would want to read.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/6/21504715/google-v-oracle-supreme-court-hearings-android-java
