Copyright doesn't say anything about "APIs." It protects any "work fixed in a tangible medium." In the BIOS cases, you just had to connect certain code to known interrupt vectors. The code itself was totally clean-room implemented, and an interrupt vector table that exists transiently in memory isn't "fixed" and "tangible." But a Java API is much more than that. You have tangible permanent source code files containing classes that have specific names and members that have specific names. Copying a Java API involves copying these things. Moreover, here it was clear that Google did have access to the JDK code while developing the Android JVM.
I appreciate that this feels like an arbitrary distinction from the programmer's point of view. The way to think about it, I think, is this: what creativity is required to design the API? Designing a class with particular methods and appropriate names requires at least minimal creativity. Putting the disk I/O routines at INT 13h instead of INT 12h doesn't; it's arbitrary.
I appreciate that this feels like an arbitrary distinction from the programmer's point of view. The way to think about it, I think, is this: what creativity is required to design the API? Designing a class with particular methods and appropriate names requires at least minimal creativity. Putting the disk I/O routines at INT 13h instead of INT 12h doesn't; it's arbitrary.