Didn't Google actually copy code from Java SE?
Like I said, Google used code from Apache Harmony, which is a separate set of APIs based on the original JDK but meant to be a fully independent open source project (since OpenJDK was still controlled by Sun/Oracle).
Again main point here is Google did not develop their own tech, write their own code entirely. They depended on availability of Java developers to kickstart the platform. Google did steal something intangible here, and did not pay for it, apart from not writing all the code themselves. Whether the system in the US offers adequate protection to those who believe some things are their property is another question.
I disagree. If this statement is true, that means that you can steal APIs, which is absurd. If you rewrite a program for changing a date format from dd/mm/yyyy to mm/dd/yyyy, you should not be sued for copyright because someone else wrote this logic first. It's like copyrighting "vehicle with four wheels" and then suing anybody who manufactures cars. Ruling in favour of fair use is the best thing to happen not only to Google but to programmers and software engineers everywhere.
Compared to here for example, people develop, own and manufacture the product, because they do not trust in the licensing model. However, in the US, the whole industry works on patents and licenses, so there are going to be that many more legal problems that deals with patents. If this stops working, we will stop getting nice things.
An API is not the same as a product. It's a (for lack of a better term) a gateway through which you integrate your own programs with any external service. For example, say you need to write a program that streams music from Spotify. Since all the music you want to stream exists on Spotify servers, you cannot access them directly in your program. So, you use a Spotify API which integrates with Spotify (via access tokens, etc) and allows you to perform some Spotify specific functionality in your own programs.
Something like this:
[Your program] --Spotify API--> [Spotify]
Here, the actual product is the Spotify service while the Spotify API is a way to access the product.
In case of Android, it's like this:
[Android app] --Java API--> [Dalvik VM/Android Runtime]
Oracle's argument is that Google copied the code structure and functionality of the Java API which they claim is infringing on their copyright, even though no Oracle product is in the picture. Not to mention that Google did not use JDK as a reference but Project Harmony above.
The absurdity of this comes from the fact that the code they have used in the examples is so trivial that any competent developer could write it from scratch and still get sued because Oracle wrote the code first, even something as simple as the date format example I gave above.
Edit:
Wine was used as an example in the case:
In another example from the 1990s, an open-source developer created a program called WINE, which allowed developers to enable Windows applications to run on computers that used the Linux open-source system, without explicit authorization from Microsoft. Gratz & Lemley, supra, at 611. To create WINE, the developer “use[d] the same hierarchy of function names” of various Windows APIs. Id. at 612. Years later, Microsoft created “the inverse of WINE,” reimplementing the 15 structure of certain Linux APIs to create the Windows Subsystem for Linux, a program that allowed Linux programs to run on Windows. Ibid. The Windows-Linux experience shows that reuse of functional code is a “twoway street” that benefits both the original creator and the follow-on developer—and ultimately the consumer. See ibid.
If Oracle had won, both Wine and WSL would be illegal since Wine did not take permission from Microsoft to use Windows APIs for running Windows applications in Linux and Microsoft did not take permission from Linus Torvalds (or the Linux Foundation) to use Linux APIs in WSL.
