In reply to Samuel "Otto" Wood.

Usually courts handle only the cases presented to them and do not engage in theoretical questions. I do not intend to read the ruling but it was really a no trainer for me that the court decided that an intellectual work created by people can be copyrightable. Now the ball is back to the lower court to decide whether google's reintroduction of the API falls under fair use (I guess it is not but "fair use" is less clear cut)

"IMO, that which is absolutely and arguably necessary to create a new work that is compatible with an existing system should not also be copyrightable by the owners of that system. The ability to make compatible works should be preserved and not subject to copyright restrictions."

why? Automattic created the Akismet API and wrote the client and server software utilizing it, why should anyone be given by default the advantage of utilizing their client code to communicate with different antispam server? It is not like it is hard to create a new API for a new service.