But what is discussed here is not the cookbook but just the table of contents. The actual recipes are different.

Making another cookbook with chapter 1: salads, chapter 2: soups etc. is common practice. The question is how much detail you are allowed to copy in order to allow for interoperability.

For instance, a dinner might call for the Oracle potato salad of Section 1.3 and Oracle tomato soup of Section 2.2. If your cookbook has your recipes (not Oracle's) in the same Sections in your book, that is useful for your readers/chefs, since they can easily switch their menus to your book.

Are you allowed to do that? That is the question.

> arguing that APIs are non-copyrightable is essentially carving out an exception for a specific type of code.

Disagree. APIs are talking about code but not code by themselves alone. Just like "The potato salad recipe is in Section 1.3" talks about a recipe but is decidedly not a recipe by itself.

If the law currently thinks that should be copyrightable, then the law should be changed.