IANAL but as I see it, the interface between hardware components is a binary interface, and this is where the difference lies between this case and others like Sony and Sega. The API here is not a binary interface but rather a textual description for humans to consume, and hence has aspects like creativity and expressivity, the very things copyright applies to. Binary interfaces have none of that. They are literally numbers for machines to interpret. Copyright cannot protect that because that is pure functionality and has no capability for expression.<p>Not to say there&#x27;s no creativity there, there certainly is. But that creativity exists in the ideas and solutions used to solve technical problems, which is then the realm of patents.<p>Google tries to conflate these two issues. Programmers may find it reasonable because of course binary code seems equivalent to program code, the former being deterministically derived from the latter. But from a copyright perspective they are very different. Binaries enjoy copyright protection as they are &quot;derived&quot; from copyright-eligible software code, but Google is not accused of copying binary code here, rather textual APIs that they did not clean room reverse.<p>Unfortunately tech media and organizations like the EFF of course portray it differently because they have an agenda, and most people accept it without critical thought.