Other than just wanting to be able to copy other people's work as they often do all the time anyway, I'm not sure I understand major tech giants' argument as to why APIs would not be copyrightable. They are, if anything, much harder to make well than their implementations.
Giving people the ability to profit off good API design would be one possible way to encourage good API design that could eventually become a public good once it was clear that something was important and high-quality.
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As you say, unfortunately our current IP system isn't designed very well, so this causes a problem, but working with what exists, copyright seems much better than patent, because patent is far too broad for an API.
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Copyright seems like the better fit, because it protects the specific API, not all APIs that are similar. That seems like what you would want. "This is JAVA, specifically" is what should be copyrighted - not "all things that are sort of like JAVA".
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