> The fact that the Supreme Court decided not to overturn the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable means that binding precedent on every court except the Supreme is that they are

No, it doesn’t. Because the Court expressly declined to examine the question, the CAFC decision is binding only where it would have been without the Supreme Court decision, i.e., those courts bound by the CAFC’s interpration of how Ninth Circuit law applies. As it turns out, that is exactly zero courts.

The reason the Supreme Court often likes to find the narrowest grounds possible for a decision is to avoid making more binding case law than is called for; giving the lower court rulings on all questions not addressed (including those the Supreme Court explicitly avoids) the same binding effect as the actual Supreme Court holding would defeat the purpose, and it is very much not how things work.

>The fact that the Supreme Court decided not to overturn the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that APIs are copyrightable means that binding precedent on every court except the Supreme is that they are.

Federal Circuit's ruling would only be precedent in the 9th circuit. As it does not have original jurisdiction in copyright disputes (only patent cases), it doesn't supercede any copyrightability rulings in other circuits, for instance the 1st circuit's holding in Lotus v Borland that the Lotus macros were not copyrightable as a "method of operation". And today's opinion cites Lotus v Borland several times even though the original 1996 Supreme Court case was deadlocked at 4-4.

Lotus' failure was more because they failed to port to Windows, betting instead on OS/2.

Lotus was at a crossroads. DOS was obsolete, was the future OS/2 or Windows? They chose OS/2.

Lotus was a big, cash rich company at the time. Their fatal error was not realizing they should have ported 1-2-3 to both OS/2 and Windows. Then they would have been secure regardless of which prevailed.

Netscape went out of business because their browser crashed far more frequently than Explorer. I've heard all the sob stories, but I was sick of the constant crashing of Netscape, and so tried Explorer. Explorer crashed too, but not nearly as often.

I should point out that in the Ninth Circuit, there's already plenty of strong, citeable precedent in favor of fair use for the purpose of interoperability; separate from the purpose of programmer convenience that the Supreme Court endorsed. It's my opinion that programmer convenience is strictly wider than interoperability. The only reason why SCOTUS needed to rule this way is:

1. Google did not copy Java APIs strictly for the purpose of interoperability (they specifically did not want interoperability with other Java environments).

2. Ninth Circuit court precedent does not apply in the Federal Circuit, which is the only reason why Oracle even had a leg to stand on.

Had Oracle not had a patent claim in this lawsuit, it would have wound up in the Ninth Circuit, we would have gotten another respectable decision limiting software copyright from that court, and the only thing SCOTUS would have had to have done would have been to deny cert to Oracle after they lost. It's entirely due to the Federal Circuit not respecting basic concepts of how software works and ruling on something that shouldn't have been in their jurisdiction that we got here.

What about Microsoft J# or Microsoft J++? A directly relatable example.

To be fair, Netscape lost because their product, at the time, was inferior. Netscape blew IE out of the water at first, but IE kept getting better. Netscape 3 was excellent, but when IE 4 came out, it was just better. Then came Netscape 4. 'Nuff said.

Lotus couldn't make the transition to Windows, and so lost to Excel (and perhaps Quattro Pro... it's been a long time and I don't remember details). This had nothing to do with copying APIs. Of course, it probably had everything to do with Microsoft's anti-competitive advantage by having access to Windows internals and undocumented features, but that's another matter.

I wonder how this would effect things like Preact too, which for operability sake, uses the exact same API as React.

DOS also copied APIs from CP/M (though that was before Microsoft bought it I assume)

Can any of those companies copying APIs in the past be sued now due to this precedent?