Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/18-956_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 48

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

5 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

would satisfy the general test for copyrightability.  “Copy-
right protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship 
fixed  in  any  tangible  medium  of  expression.”    §102(a).
“Works of authorship include . . . literary works,” which are
“works . . . expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or 
numerical symbols.”  §§101, 102(a).  And a work is “original”
if it is “independently created by the author” and “possesses 
at least some minimal degree of creativity.”  Feist Publica-
tions, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U. S. 340, 345 
(1991).  The  lines  of  declaring  code  in  the  Java  platform 
readily satisfy this “extremely low” threshold.  Ibid.  First, 
they are expressed in “words, numbers, or other verbal or 
numerical  symbols”  and  are  thus  works  of  authorship. 
§101.    Second,  as  Google  concedes,  the  lines  of  declaring 
code are original because Oracle could have created them
any number of ways.

Google contends that declaring code is a “method of oper-
ation” and thus excluded from protection by §102(b).  That 
subsection  excludes  from  copyright  protection  “any  idea,
procedure,  process,  system,  method  of  operation,  concept, 
principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is
described, explained, illustrated, or embodied.”  This provi-
sion codifies the “idea/expression dichotomy” that copyright
protection  covers  only  the  “the  author’s  expression”  of  an 
idea, not the idea itself.  Golan v. Holder, 565 U. S. 302, 328 
(2012).  A property right in the idea itself “can only be se-
cured, if it can be secured at all, by letters-patent.”  Baker 
v.  Selden,  101  U. S.  99,  105  (1880).    Thus,  for  example,  a
“method of book-keeping” is not protected by copyright, but
the expression describing that accounting method is.  Id., at 
101–102.  So too, a person who writes a book inventing the
idea of declaring code has a copyright protection in the ex-
pression in the book, but not in the idea of declaring code
itself.  Google acknowledges that implementing code is pro-
tected by the Copyright Act, but it contends that declaring