>What's worse for Google is that code has always been considered copyrightable so arguing that APIs are non-copyrightable is essentially carving out an exception for a specific type of code.
That's another aspect. API isn't code, only implementation produces executable code, API only helps ensure that those chunks of code fit together, like book's spine holds pages together and in order.
If APIs are like book spine I don't know why teams are spending so much time designing and thinking about their APIs. Just slap on a "book spine" and get to writing code you procrastinating devs.