An Introduction to AuthoritySpoke¶
“Details, unnumbered, shifting, sharp, disordered, unchartable, jagged.”
Karl N. Llewellyn, The Bramble Bush: On Our Law and Its Study (1930).
AuthoritySpoke is a Python package that will help you make legal authority readable by computers.
This notebook will provide an overview of AuthoritySpoke’s most important features. AuthoritySpoke is still in an alpha state, so many features have yet to be implemented, and some others still have limited functionality.
AuthoritySpoke is open source software (as well as Ethical Source software). That mean you have the opportunity to reuse AuthoritySpoke in your own projects. You can also participate in its development by submitting issues, bug reports, and pull requests.
Getting Example Data¶
AuthoritySpoke helps you work with three kinds of data: court opinions, legislative enactments, and structured annotations of legal procedural rules.
To help you obtain court opinions, AuthoritySpoke provides an interface to the Caselaw Access Project API, a project of the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab. You’ll need to register for an API key.
To provide you with legislation text, AuthoritySpoke imports the Legislice Python package, which provides an interface to the Legislice API at authorityspoke.com. This API currently provides access to recent versions of the United States Code, plus the United States Constitution. You’ll need to sign up for an account and then obtain a Legislice API key from your account page. The Legislice API key is not the same as the Caselaw Access Project API key.
As of version 0.4, you mostly have to create your own procedural rule
annotations, but the example_data
folder of the GitHub repository
for AuthoritySpoke
contains example annotations for several cases. The rest of this
tutorial depends on having access to the example_data
folder, so if
you’re running the tutorial code interactively, you’ll need to either
clone the AuthoritySpoke repository to your computer and run the
tutorial from there, or else run the tutorial from a cloud environment
like
Binder.
If you’ve installed AuthoritySpoke and you need access to the example
data files, you’ll need to download them from the GitHub
repository.
Importing the Package¶
If you want to use AuthoritySpoke in your own Python environment, be
sure you have installed AuthoritySpoke using a command like
pip install AuthoritySpoke
on the command line. Visit the Python
Package Index for more
details.
With a Python environment activated, let’s import AuthoritySpoke by running the cell below.
>>> import authorityspoke
>>> USE_REAL_CASE_API = True
>>> USE_REAL_LEGISLICE_API = True
If you’re running this code on your own machine
but you don’t want to obtain API keys or make real API calls over the
Internet, you can change the two True
variables to False
to
use fake versions of the APIs.
>>> USE_REAL_CASE_API = False
>>> USE_REAL_LEGISLICE_API = False
If you executed that cell with no error messages, then it worked!
If you got a message like No module named 'authorityspoke'
, then
AuthoritySpoke is probably not installed in your current Python
environment. In that case, check the Python
documentation for
help on installing modules.
Optional: Skip the Downloads and Load Decisions from a File¶
To use the cell below to access authorityspoke.decisions.Decision
objects from a file rather
than an API, be sure the USE_REAL_CASE_API
variable is set to
False
. This should work if you’re running the tutorial in a notebook
in a cloud environment like Binder, or if you’ve cloned AuthoritySpoke’s
GitHub repository to your hard drive and you’re using jupyter
to run
the tutorial in from the notebooks
folder of the repository. The
notebook will try to find the data for the fake APIs in the
example_data
folder alongside a notebooks
folder where this
notebook is running.
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import load_decision
>>> from authorityspoke.io.readers import read_decision
>>> if not USE_REAL_CASE_API:
... oracle_download = load_decision("oracle_h.json")
... lotus_download = load_decision("lotus_h.json")
Downloading and Importing Decisions¶
If you didn’t load court opinions from the GitHub repository as described in section 1.1, then you’ll be using the Caselaw Access Project (CAP) API to get court opinions to load into AuthoritySpoke. To download full cases from CAP, you’ll need to register for a CAP API key.
One good way to use an API key in a Jupyter Notebook or other Python
working file is to save the API key in a file called .env
. The
.env
file should contain a line that looks like
CAP_API_KEY=your-api-key-here
. Then you can use
the dotenv
Python package to load the API key as an environment variable without
ever writing the API key in the notebook. That makes it easier to keep
your API key secret, even if you publish your copy of the notebook and
make it visible on the internet.
However, if you’re viewing this tutorial in a cloud environment like
Binder, you probably won’t be able to create an environment variable.
Instead, you could replace os.getenv('CAP_API_KEY')
with a string
containing your own API key.
>>> import os
>>> from dotenv import load_dotenv
>>> load_dotenv()
True
>>> CAP_API_KEY = os.getenv('CAP_API_KEY')
Next we need to download some cases for analysis.
The CAP API limits users to downloading 500 full cases per day. If you
accidentally make a query that returns hundreds of full cases, you could
hit your limit before you know it. You should first try out your API
queries without the "full_case": "true"
parameter, and then only
request full cases once you’re confident you’ll receive what you expect.
Let’s download Oracle America v. Google, 750 F.3d 1339 (2014), a landmark opinion in which the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held that the interface of the Java language was copyrightable. And since we’ll want to compare the Oracle case to a related case, let’s also download Lotus Development Corporation v. Borland International, 49 F.3d 807 (1995). In that case, the First Circuit Court of Appeals held that the menu structure of a spreadsheet program called Lotus 1-2-3 was uncopyrightable because it was a “method of operation” under the Copyright Act. As we’ll see, the Oracle case discusses and disagrees with the Lotus case.
If you already loaded an Opinion
from a file, running the cells
below with USE_REAL_CASE_API
set to True will attempt to overwrite
them with data from the API. You should be able to run the rest of the
tutorial code either way.
>>> from authorityspoke import LegisClient
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import load_and_read_decision
>>> if USE_REAL_CASE_API:
... client = LegisClient(api_token=CAP_API_KEY)
... oracle_download = client.fetch(cite="750 F.3d 1339")
Now we have a record representing the Oracle case, which can also be found in the “example_data/opinions” folder under the filename “oracle_h.json”. Let’s look at a field from the API response.
>>> oracle_download["name"]
'ORACLE AMERICA, INC., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GOOGLE INC., Defendant-Cross-Appellant'
Yes, this is the correct case name. But if we had provided the API key
and used the full_case
flag, we could have received more
information, like whether there are any non-majority opinions in the
case, and the names of the opinion authors. So let’s request the
Oracle case with full_case=True
.
>>> if USE_REAL_CASE_API:
... oracle_download = download_case(
... cite="750 F.3d 1339",
... full_case=True,
... api_key=CAP_API_KEY)
And then do the same for the Lotus case.
>>> if USE_REAL_CASE_API:
... lotus_download = download_case(
... cite="49 F.3d 807",
... full_case=True,
... api_key=CAP_API_KEY)
Now let’s convert the Oracle API response to an AuthoritySpoke object.
>>> from authorityspoke.io.readers import read_decision
>>> oracle = read_decision(oracle_download)
And take a look at the object we made.
>>> print(oracle)
Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., 750 F.3d 1339 (2014-05-09)
>>> lotus = read_decision(lotus_download)
>>> print(lotus)
Lotus Development Corp. v. Borland International, Inc., 49 F.3d 807 (1995-03-09)
One judicial Decision
can include
multiple Opinion
s. The Lotus
Decision
has a concurring opinion
as well as a majority opinion.
Access the majority
attribute of the Decision
object to get the majority opinion.
>>> print(lotus.majority)
majority Opinion by STAHL, Circuit Judge.
Downloading Enactments¶
The interface for downloading legislation is a little different. First
you create a Client class that holds your API key. Then you can use the
legislice.download.Client.fetch()
method to fetch JSON
representing the provision at a
specified citation on a specified date (or the most recent version, if
you don’t specify a date). Or you can
use legislice.download.Client.read()
, which also
fetches the JSON but then loads it into an instance of
the Enactment
class.
>>> from authorityspoke.io.downloads import LegisClient
>>> from authorityspoke.io.fake_enactments import FakeClient
>>> if USE_REAL_LEGISLICE_API:
... LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN = os.getenv("LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN")
... legis_client = LegisClient(api_token=LEGISLICE_API_TOKEN)
... else:
... legis_client = FakeClient.from_file("usc.json")
Importing and Exporting Legal Holdings¶
Now we can link some legal analysis to each
majority Opinion
by
using authorityspoke.decisions.Decision.posit()
or authorityspoke.opinions.Opinion.posit()
. The parameter we pass to
this function is a Holding
or list
of Holding
s posited by the
Opinion
. You can think of
a Holding
as a statement about whether
a Rule
is or is not valid law.
A holding may exist in the abstract, or one or
more Opinion
s may
posit()
it, which
means that the Opinion
adopts
the Holding
as its own. An
Opinion
may posit more than
one Holding
.
Sadly, the labor of creating data
about Holding
s falls mainly to
the user rather than the computer, at least in this early version of
AuthoritySpoke. AuthoritySpoke
loads Holding
s from structured
descriptions that need to be created outside of AuthoritySpoke as JSON
files. For more information on creating these JSON files, see
the Creating and Loading Holding Data.
The guide includes a JSON API Specification
describing the required data format.
For now, this introduction will rely on example JSON files that have
already been created. AuthoritySpoke should find them and convert them
to AuthoritySpoke objects when we call
the read_holdings_from_file()
function. If you pass in a client
parameter, AuthoritySpoke will
make calls to the API at
authorityspoke.com to find and link
the statutes or other Enactment
s cited in
the Holding
.
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import read_holdings_from_file
>>> oracle_holdings = read_holdings_from_file("holding_oracle.json", client=legis_client)
>>> print(oracle_holdings[0])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
You can also convert Holdings back to JSON, or to a Python dictionary,
using the dump
module.
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> from authorityspoke.io.dump import to_json, to_dict
>>> pprint(to_dict(oracle_holdings[0])["rule"]["procedure"])
{'despite': [],
'inputs': [{'absent': False,
'generic': False,
'name': '',
'predicate': {'content': '${the_java_api} was an original work',
'expression': None,
'truth': False},
'standard_of_proof': None,
'terms': [{'generic': True,
'name': 'the Java API',
'plural': False,
'type': 'Entity'}],
'type': 'Fact'}],
'outputs': [{'absent': False,
'generic': False,
'name': '',
'predicate': {'content': '${the_java_api} was copyrightable',
'expression': None,
'truth': False},
'standard_of_proof': None,
'terms': [{'generic': True,
'name': 'the Java API',
'plural': False,
'type': 'Entity'}],
'type': 'Fact'}]}
Linking Holdings to Opinions¶
If you want annotation anchors to link each Holding to a passage in an
Opinion
, you can use
the load_holdings_with_anchors()
method. The
result is type of NamedTuple
called
AnchoredHoldings
. You can pass
this NamedTuple as the only argument
to the authorityspoke.decisions.Decision.posit()
method
to assign the Holding
s to the
majority Opinion
of a
Decision
.
This will also link the correct text passages from
the Opinion
to
each Holding
.
>>> from authorityspoke.io.loaders import read_anchored_holdings_from_file
>>> oracle_holdings_with_anchors = read_anchored_holdings_from_file("holding_oracle.json", client=legis_client)
>>> lotus_holdings_with_anchors = read_anchored_holdings_from_file("holding_lotus.json", client=legis_client)
>>> oracle.posit(oracle_holdings_with_anchors)
>>> lotus.posit(lotus_holdings_with_anchors)
You can pass either one Holding or a list of Holdings to
authorityspoke.decisions.Decision.posit()
.
The posit()
method also has a
text_links
parameter that takes a dict indicating what text spans in
the Opinion should be linked to which Holding.
Viewing an Opinion’s Holdings¶
If you take a look in
holding_oracle.json
in AuthoritySpoke’s git repository, you’ll see that it would be loaded
in Python as a list
of 20 dict
s, each representing a
holding. (In case you aren’t familiar with how Python handles JSON, the outer
square brackets represent the beginning and end of the list. The start and end of each
dict
in the list is shown by a matched pair of curly brackets.)
Let’s make sure that the posit()
method
linked all of those holdings to
our oracle
Opinion
object.
>>> len(oracle.holdings)
20
Now let’s see the string representation of the AuthoritySpoke Holding object we created from the structured JSON we saw above.
>>> print(oracle.holdings[0])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
Instead of the terms “inputs” and “outputs” we saw in the JSON file, we
now have “GIVEN” and “RESULT”. And the “RESULT” comes first, because
it’s hard to understand anything else about a legal rule until you
understand what it does. Also, notice the separate heading “GIVEN the
ENACTMENT”. This indicates that the existence of statutory text (or
another kind of enactment such as a constitution) can also be a
precondition for a Rule
to apply.
So the two preconditions that must
be present to apply this Rule
are
“the fact it was false that the Java API was an original work” and
the statutory text creating copyright protection.
It’s also important to notice that
a Rule
can be purely hypothetical
from the point of view of the Opinion that posits it. In this case, the
court finds that there would be a certain legal significance if it was
“GIVEN” that it is false that <the Java API> was an original work
,
but the court isn’t going to find that precondition applies, so it’s
also not going to accept the “RESULT” that
it is false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
.
We can also access just the inputs of a Holding
, just the
Enactment
s, etc.
>>> print(oracle.holdings[0].inputs[0])
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work
>>> print(oracle.holdings[0].enactments[0])
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
Generic Factors¶
The two instances of the phrase “the Java API” are in angle brackets to
indicate that the Java API is a generic nettlesome.entities.Entity
mentioned
in the Fact
.
>>> oracle.holdings[0].generic_terms()
[Entity(name='the Java API')]
A generic Entity
is “generic”
in the sense that in the context of
the Factor
where
the Entity
appears, it could be replaced with
some other generic Entity
without
changing the meaning of the
Factor
or the Rule
where it appears.
Let’s illustrate this idea with the first holding from the Lotus case.
>>> print(lotus.holdings[0])
the Holding to ACCEPT that the EXCLUSIVE way to reach the fact that
<Borland International> infringed the copyright in <the Lotus menu
command hierarchy> is
the Rule that the court MAY SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact that <Borland International> infringed the copyright in <the
Lotus menu command hierarchy>
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was copyrightable
the fact that <Borland International> copied constituent elements of
<the Lotus menu command hierarchy> that were original
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
What if we wanted to generalize
this Holding
about copyright and
apply it in a different context, such as a case about books or
television shows instead of computer programs? First we could look at
the “generic” Factor
s of
the Holding
, which were marked off in
angle brackets in the string representation of
the Holding
.
>>> lotus.holdings[0].generic_terms()
[Entity(name='Borland International'), Entity(name='the Lotus menu command hierarchy')]
The same Rule
s and
Holding
s may be relevant to more than one
Opinion
. Let’s try applying the idea from lotus.holdings[0]
to a
different copyright case that’s also about a derivative work. In Castle
Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group
Inc.
(1998), a United States Court of Appeals found that a publisher
infringed the copyright in the sitcom Seinfeld by publishing a trivia
book called SAT: The Seinfeld Aptitude Test.
Maybe we’d like to see how the Holding
from
the Lotus case could
have applied in the context of the Castle Rock Entertainment case,
under 17 USC 102. We can check that by using the
new_context()
method to replace
the generic factors from the
Lotus Holding
. One way to do this
is by passing a tuple containing a list of factors that need to be replaced,
followed by a list of their replacements.
>>> from authorityspoke import Entity
>>> seinfeld_holding = lotus.holdings[0].new_context(
... terms_to_replace=[
... Entity("Borland International"),
... Entity("the Lotus menu command hierarchy")],
... changes=[Entity("Carol Publishing Group"), Entity("Seinfeld")])
The new_context()
method
returns a new Holding
object,
which we’ve assigned to the name seinfeld_holding
, but
the Holding
that we
used as a basis for the new object also still exists, and it’s
unchanged.
>>> print(seinfeld_holding)
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MAY SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact that <Carol Publishing Group> infringed the copyright in
<Seinfeld>
GIVEN:
the fact that <Seinfeld> was copyrightable
the fact that <Carol Publishing Group> copied constituent elements of
<Seinfeld> that were original
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
Even though these Holding
s have different
generic factors and don’t evaluate equal to one another,
the means()
method
shows that they have the same meaning. In other words, they both endorse
exactly the same legal Rule. If
Holding A means()
Holding B, then
Holding A also necessarily implies()
Holding B.
>>> lotus.holdings[0] == seinfeld_holding
False
>>> lotus.holdings[0].means(seinfeld_holding)
True
Enactment Objects and Implication¶
Sometimes it’s useful to know whether
one Rule
or Holding
implies another. Basically, one
legal Holding
implies()
a second
Holding
if its meaning
entirely includes the meaning of the second
Holding
. To illustrate this idea,
let’s look at the Enactment
that needs to be present to support the Holding
at
oracle.holdings[0]
.
>>> copyright_provision = oracle.holdings[0].enactments[0]
>>> print(copyright_provision)
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
The Enactment
object refers to part of the text of subsection 102(a)
from Title 17 of the United States
Code.
Next, let’s create a new Enactment
object representing a shorter
passage of text from the same provision. We select some text from the
provision by calling the select()
method with the string “Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title,
in original works of authorship”, which exactly
matches some text that can be found in subsection 102(a).
>>> from authorityspoke import Enactment
>>> from anchorpoint import TextQuoteSelector
>>> works_of_authorship_passage = (
... "Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, "
... + "in original works of authorship")
>>> works_of_authorship_clause = legis_client.read("/us/usc/t17/s102/a")
>>> works_of_authorship_clause.select(works_of_authorship_passage)
Now we can create a new Holding
object
that cites to our new Enactment
object
rather than the old one. This time, instead of using the
new_context()
method to create
a new Holding
object,
we’ll use Python’s built-in deepcopy()
function. This method gives us an
identical copy of the Holding
that we can change without
changing the original. Then we can use
the set_enactments()
method to
change what Enactment
is
cited by the new Holding
.
>>> from copy import deepcopy
>>> holding_with_shorter_enactment = deepcopy(oracle.holdings[0])
>>> holding_with_shorter_enactment.set_enactments(works_of_authorship_clause)
>>> print(holding_with_shorter_enactment)
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
Now let’s try comparing this new Holding
with the real Holding
from
the Oracle case, to see whether one implies()
the other. When
you’re comparing AuthoritySpoke objects, the greater than sign >
means “implies, but is not equal to”.
>>> holding_with_shorter_enactment > oracle.holdings[0]
True
You can also use the greater than or equal sign >=
to mean “implies
or is equal to”. You can also use lesser than signs to test whether an
object on the right side of the expression implies the object on the
left. Thus, <=
would mean “is implied by or is equal to”.
>>> holding_with_shorter_enactment <= oracle.holdings[0]
False
By comparing the string representations of the
original Holding
from
the Oracle case and holding_with_shorter_enactment
, can you tell
why the latter implies the former, and not the other way around?
If you guessed that it was because holding_with_shorter_enactment
has a shorter Enactment
, you’re right.
A Rule
that requires
fewer, or less specific, inputs is broader than
a Rule
that has
more inputs, because there’s a larger set of situations where the
Rule
can be triggered.
If this relationship isn’t clear to you, imagine some “Enactment A” containing only a subset of the text of “Enactment B”, and then imagine what would happen if a legislature amended some of the statutory text that was part of Enactment B but not of Enactment A. A requirement to cite Enactment B would no longer be possible to satisfy, because some of that text would no longer be available. Thus a requirement to cite Enactment A could be satisfied in every situation where a requirement to cite Enactment B could be satisfied, and then some.
Checking for Contradictions¶
Let’s turn back to the Lotus case.
It says that under a statute providing that “In no case does copyright
protection for an original work of authorship extend to any…method of
operation”, the fact that a Lotus menu command hierarchy was a “method
of operation” meant that it was also uncopyrightable, despite a couple
of Fact
s that might tempt some
courts to rule the other way.
>>> print(lotus.holdings[6])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST ALWAYS impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was
copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was a method of
operation
DESPITE:
the fact that a text described <the Lotus menu command hierarchy>
the fact that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any…method of operation…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/b 2013-07-18)
Lotus was a case relied upon by Google in the Oracle v. Google case,
but Oracle was the winner in that decision. So we might wonder whether
the Oracle majority opinion
contradicts()
the Lotus
majority opinion. Let’s check.
>>> oracle.contradicts(lotus)
True
That’s good to know, but we don’t want to take it on faith that a
contradiction exists. Let’s use
the explain_contradiction()
method to
find the contradictory Holding
s posited
by the Oracle and Lotus cases, and to generate a rudimentary
explanation of why they contradict.
>>> explanation = lotus.explain_contradiction(oracle)
>>> print(explanation)
Because <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> is like <the Java API>,
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST ALWAYS impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was
copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was a method of
operation
DESPITE:
the fact that a text described <the Lotus menu command hierarchy>
the fact that <the Lotus menu command hierarchy> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any…method of operation…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/b 2013-07-18)
CONTRADICTS
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact that <the Java API> was copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Java language> was a computer program
the fact that <the Java API> was a set of application programming
interface declarations
the fact that <the Java API> was an original work
the fact that <the Java API> was a non-literal element of <the Java
language>
the fact that <the Java API> was the expression of an idea
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was essentially the only way
to express the idea that it embodied
the fact that <the Java API> was creative
the fact that it was possible to use <the Java language> without
copying <the Java API>
DESPITE:
the fact that <the Java API> was a method of operation
the fact that <the Java API> contained short phrases
the fact that <the Java API> became so popular that it was the
industry standard
the fact that there was a preexisting community of programmers
accustomed to using <the Java API>
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
DESPITE the ENACTMENTS:
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any…method of operation…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/b 2013-07-18)
"The following are examples of works not subject to copyright and applications for registration of such works cannot be entertained: Words and short phrases such as names, titles, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering or coloring; mere listing of ingredients or contents; Ideas, plans, methods, systems, or devices, as distinguished from the particular manner in which they are expressed or described in a writing; Blank forms, such as time cards, graph paper, account books, diaries, bank checks, scorecards, address books, report forms, order forms and the like, which are designed for recording information and do not in themselves convey information; Works consisting entirely of information that is common property containing no original authorship, such as, for example: Standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures and rulers, schedules of sporting events, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources. Typeface as typeface." (/us/cfr/t37/s202.1 1992-02-21)
That’s a really complicated holding! Good thing we have AuthoritySpoke to help us grapple with it.
We can use the explain_contradiction()
method
directly on a Holding
to generate all
available Explanation
s of why a
contradiction is possible between lotus.holdings[6] and
oracle.holdings[10]. Each Explanation
includes a mapping that shows how the context factors of
the Holding
on the left can be mapped
onto the Holding
on the right.
The explanation we’ve already been
given is that these two Holding
s
contradict each other if you
consider ‘the Lotus menu command hierarchy’ to be analagous to ‘the Java
API’. The other possible explanation AuthoritySpoke could have given
would have been that ‘the Lotus menu command hierarchy’ is analagous to
‘the Java language’. Let’s see if the other
possible Explanation
also appears in explanations
.
>>> explanations = list(lotus.holdings[6].explanations_contradiction(oracle.holdings[10]))
>>> len(explanations)
1
No, there’s only one Explanation
given for how these rules can contradict each other.
(The explain_contradiction()
method
returns only one one Explanation
, but
explanations_contradiction()
is a generator that yields every Explanation
it can find.) If you read the Oracle case, is makes sense that ‘the
Lotus menu command hierarchy’ is not considered analagous to
‘the Java language’. The Oracle case is only
about infringing the copyright in the Java API, not the copyright in the
whole Java language. A statement about infringement of ‘the Java
language’ would be irrelevant, not contradictory.
But what exactly is the contradiction between the two Holding
s?
The first obvious contrast between lotus.holdings[6]
and
oracle.holdings[10]
is that
the Holding
from the Lotus case is
relatively succinct and categorical. The Lotus court interprets
Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act to mean that if a work is a “method
of operation”, it’s simply impossible for that work to be copyrighted,
so it’s not necessary to consider a lot of case-specific facts to reach
a conclusion.
The Federal Circuit’s Oracle decision complicates that view significantly. The Federal Circuit believes that the fact that an API is, or hypothetically might be, a “method of operation” is only one of many factors that a court can consider in deciding copyrightability. The following quotation, repeated in the Oracle case, illustrates the Federal Circuit’s view.
“Section 102(b) does not extinguish the protection accorded a particular expression of an idea merely because that expression is embodied in a method of operation.” Mitel, Inc. v. Iqtel, Inc., 124 F.3d 1366, 1372 (10th Cir.1997)
And that’s why AuthoritySpoke finds a contradiction between these two
Rule
s. The Oracle opinion says that
courts can sometimes accept the result the fact that <the Java API>
was copyrightable
despite
the Fact
<the Java API> was a method
of operation
. The Lotus Opinion
would consider that impossible.
By the way, AuthoritySpoke does not draw on any Natural Language
Understanding technologies to determine the meaning of
each Fact
.
AuthoritySpoke mostly won’t recognize
that Fact
s have the same
meaning unless their content
values are exactly the same string. As
discussed above, they can also differ in their references to generic
factors, which are the phrases that appear in brackets when you use the
str()
command on them. Also, AuthoritySpoke has a limited ability
to compare numerical statements in Fact
s using
pint, an amazing Python
library that performs dimensional analysis.
Adding Holdings to One Another¶
To try out the addition operation, let’s load another case from the
example_data
folder.
>>> feist = load_and_read_decision("feist_h.json")
>>> feist.posit(read_anchored_holdings_from_file("holding_feist.json", client=legis_client))
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co. was a case that held that the listings in a telephone directory did not qualify as “an original work” and that only original works are eligible for protection under the Copyright Act. This is a two-step analysis.
The first step results in
the Fact
it is false that a generic
Entity
was “an original work”:
>>> print(feist.holdings[10])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MAY SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <Rural's telephone listings> were an
original work
GIVEN:
the fact that <Rural's telephone listings> were names, towns, and
telephone numbers of telephone subscribers
GIVEN the ENACTMENTS:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their respective Writings…" (/us/const/article/I/8/8 1788-09-13)
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
"The copyright in a compilation…extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material.…" (/us/usc/t17/s103/b 2013-07-18)
And the second step relies on the result of the first step to reach the
further result of “absence of the fact that” a
generic nettlesome.entities.Entity
was “copyrightable”.
>>> print(feist.holdings[3])
the Holding to ACCEPT that the EXCLUSIVE way to reach the fact that
<Rural's telephone directory> was copyrightable is
the Rule that the court MAY SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact that <Rural's telephone directory> was copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <Rural's telephone directory> was an original work
GIVEN the ENACTMENTS:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their respective Writings…" (/us/const/article/I/8/8 1788-09-13)
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
In this situation, anytime the
first Holding
(feist.holdings[10]) is
applied, the second Holding (feist.holdings[3]) can be applied as well.
That means the two Holdings can be __add__()
ed
together to make a single Holding that captures the whole process.
>>> listings_not_copyrightable = feist.holdings[10] + feist.holdings[3]
>>> print(listings_not_copyrightable)
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MAY SOMETIMES impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <Rural's telephone listings> were an
original work
absence of the fact that <Rural's telephone listings> were
copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <Rural's telephone listings> were names, towns, and
telephone numbers of telephone subscribers
GIVEN the ENACTMENTS:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their respective Writings…" (/us/const/article/I/8/8 1788-09-13)
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
"The copyright in a compilation…extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material.…" (/us/usc/t17/s103/b 2013-07-18)
The difference between feist.holdings[10]
and the newly-created
Holding listings_not_copyrightable
is that
listings_not_copyrightable
has
two Factor
s under its “RESULT”, not
just one. Notice that it doesn’t matter that the two original Holdings
reference different generic nettlesome.entities.Entity
objects
(“Rural’s telephone directory” versus “Rural’s telephone listings”).
Because they’re generic, they’re interchangeable for this purpose.
You might recall that oracle.holdings[0] also was also about the relationship between originality and copyrightability. Let’s see what happens when we add oracle.holdings[0] to feist.holdings[10].
>>> print(feist.holdings[10] + oracle.holdings[0])
None
Can you guess why it’s not possible to add these
two Holding
s together?
Here’s a hint:
>>> feist.holdings[10].exclusive
False
>>> oracle.holdings[0].exclusive
False
>>> feist.holdings[3].exclusive
True
feist.holdings[10]
and oracle.holdings[0]
are
both Holding
s that
purport to apply in only “SOME” cases where the specified inputs are
present, while feist.holdings[3]
purports to be the “EXCLUSIVE” way
to reach its output, which indicates a statement about “ALL” cases.
You can’t infer that there’s any situation where feist.holdings[10]
and oracle.holdings[0]
can actually be applied together, because
there might not be any overlap between the “SOME” cases where one
applies and the “SOME” cases where the other applies. But if
feist.holdings[10]
and feist.holdings[3]
are both valid law,
then we know they can both apply together in any of the “SOME” cases
where feist.holdings[10]
applies.
Set Operations with Holdings¶
In AuthoritySpoke, the __or__()
operator
(the | symbol) is an alias for the union()
operation. This operation is different from
the __add__()
operation, and it usually gives different results.
>>> result_of_adding = feist.holdings[10] + feist.holdings[3]
>>> result_of_union = feist.holdings[10] | feist.holdings[3]
>>> result_of_adding == result_of_union
False
Although the existence of the union()
operation might suggest that there
should also be an intersection operation, an intersection operation
is not yet implemented in AuthoritySpoke 0.4.
Apply the union()
operator
to two Holding
s to get a
new Holding
with all of the inputs and all of the outputs of both of the two
original Holding
s. However, you only get such a new Holding
if
it can be inferred by accepting the truth of the two original
Holding
s. If self
contradicts()
other
, the operation returns None
. Likewise, if the two original
Holding
s both have the value False
for the parameter
universal
, the operation will return None
if it’s possible that
the “SOME” cases where one of the original Holding
s applies don’t
overlap with the “SOME” cases where the other applies.
In this example, we’ll look at a Holding
from Oracle, then a
Holding
from Feist, and then
the union()
of both of them.
>>> print(oracle.holdings[1])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST ALWAYS impose the
RESULT:
the fact that <the Java API> was an original work
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Java API> was independently created by the author,
as opposed to copied from other works
the fact that <the Java API> possessed at least some minimal degree of
creativity
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
>>> print(feist.holdings[2])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST ALWAYS impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <Rural's telephone directory> was
copyrightable
GIVEN:
the fact that <Rural's telephone directory> was an idea
GIVEN the ENACTMENT:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their respective Writings…" (/us/const/article/I/8/8 1788-09-13)
>>> print(oracle.holdings[1] | feist.holdings[2])
the Holding to ACCEPT
the Rule that the court MUST ALWAYS impose the
RESULT:
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
the fact that <the Java API> was an original work
GIVEN:
the fact that <the Java API> was an idea
the fact that <the Java API> possessed at least some minimal degree of
creativity
the fact that <the Java API> was independently created by the author,
as opposed to copied from other works
GIVEN the ENACTMENTS:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their respective Writings…" (/us/const/article/I/8/8 1788-09-13)
"Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.…" (/us/usc/t17/s102/a 2013-07-18)
It’s not obvious that a litigant could really establish all the “GIVEN”
Factors listed above in a single case in a court where
oracle.holdings[1]
and feist.holdings[2]
were both valid law,
but if they could, then it seems correct for AuthoritySpoke to conclude
that the court would have to find both
the fact that <the Java API> was an original work
and
the fact it was false that <the Java API> was copyrightable
.
The union()
operator is useful
for searching for contradictions in a
collection of Holding
s. When two
Holding
s are combined
together with the union operator, their union might contradict other
Holdings that neither of the two original Holdings would
have contradicted on their own.