The author of the article needs to have every claim treated with a huge bag of salt. He is a hack for Oracle.
That being said - example 1) You can’t copyright an API! Oracle can with that all it wants - but it is a loosing battle. It’s been through the courts before, and doesn’t wash.
An API is a specification on how to talk to a functional unit. It is NOT the functional unit itself. Implementation of that API is the functional piece of software that can be copyrighted.
This is right up there with SCO trying to claim copyright ownership of error.h from the C world. It didn’t work for SCO and won’t work for Oracle.
Further - there is real power in Google’s argument about being a trivial piece of code out of millions of lines of code. They are admitting that there are something like 9 places where they may have copied a few lines of code (this example given is of that magnitude.) 9 places constituting around maybe 100 lines of code out of multiple millions makes it trivial. No way Oracle can call that a derivative work.
Lastly -as others have pointed out. There are many places where there is only one reasonable way to code something. Implementing an API puts you in a further straight-jacket.
Ignore anything that Florian Mueller publishes -because it is going to contain a very slanted point of view. I would suggest following Groklaw.net if you want to see a more accurate discussion of the blow-by-blow of the Google/Oracle lawsuit. They’ll also educate you on what the law is and what is important.
I have to disagree. I read and post articles from both. Florian Mueller has been spot on and pretty even handed. He publishes articles following the law as written, not as people wish it were in an idealized world. His viewpoint does fall more toward support of Free and Open Source Software licensing, and that's where his field of expertise lies. He also understands European laws far better than Groklaw, which is probably better in general law issues.