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Seriously? "When I started coding Kik, didn’t know there is a company with same name. And I didn’t want to let a company force me to change the name of it. Afte

by jlg23 11y ago

Seriously? "When I started coding Kik, didn’t know there is a company with same name. And I didn’t want to let a company force me to change the name of it. After I refused them, they reached NPM’s support emphasizing their lawyer power in every single e-mail CC’ing me. I was hoping that NPM would protect me, because I always believed that NPM is a nice organization." a) Ignorance is no excuse. b) Expecting others to fight for one is lame. Either have the balls and fight or STFU. "Summary; NPM is no longer a place that I’ll share my open source work at, so, I’ve just unpublished all my modules. This is not a knee-jerk action." Wrong, that is the prototype of a knee-jerk action. Last but not least, whining about it in public in the hope "something will happen" is pathetic. What I'd suggest (though now it is too late): Rename the module to comply with legal claims, put up a new module under the old name that throws errors when called that describe the reason so developers see it and put shame on the threatening company/lawyers.

gnaritas 11y ago
> Wrong, that is the prototype of a knee-jerk action. No it isn't; and he made that clear, he objects to their actions and is taking action of his own. > Last but not least, whining about it in public in the hope "something will happen" is pathetic. No, it's called protesting, and it's exactly the correct thing to do. Calling it pathetic is itself pathetic. > hat I'd suggest (though now it is too late): Rename the module to comply with legal claims, put up a new module under the old name that throws errors when called that describe the reason so developers see it and put shame on the threatening company/lawyers. You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  He made it clear he doesn't want to consider it a knee jerk, which has approximately zero relationship to whether it actually is. Protesting trademark law sounds like a lot of useless fun. It may be the "correct" thing to do, but it will have no result.
  - st3v3r 11y ago
    He's not protesting trademark law; he's protesting that NPM just handed over his module to someone else.
  - gnaritas 11y ago
    > He made it clear he doesn't want to consider it a knee jerk, which has approximately zero relationship to whether it actually is. A knee jerk reaction is an immediate unthinking emotional reaction; when you detail out your thought process in a lengthy well articulated blog post to explain your actions, it isn't knee jerk by definition. There was nothing at all unthinking about his actions or his protest. Point in fact, when someone explains to you why something isn't a knee jerk reaction, it automatically isn't. His making it clear has an approximately 100% relationship to the fact that it isn't.
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  > You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable. Is this the kik we're talking about? http://dev.kik.com/ http://dev.kik.com/ https://trademarks.justia.com/858/93/kik-85893307.html https://trademarks.justia.com/858/93/kik-85893307.html Is the point that kik should just give up on their company trademark?
  - linksbro 11y ago
    Just because they've trademarked "kik" doesn't give them complete control over all instances of that 3 letter string in the world. See the 8 factors of trademark infringement, and trademark law in general; this is just a kik lawyer being threat happy.
    - gariany 11y ago
      +1 also US Trademark != the whole world. NPM should have handle this better!
      - detaro 11y ago
        US trademark is what's dangerous to NPM Inc., the US company running NPM. We don't know anything about how they "handled" it before it came to this, except that they did decide against the article author. What should they have done differently? It's not good that NPM-the-piece-of-infrastructure is vulnerable to this, maybe a registry like this shouldn't be under control of a single company, but we don't know enough to decide what options NPM Inc-the-company had. I hope they clean up/better communicate their policies around this, once they have them figured out (e.g. the package dispute page doesn't discuss trademarks).
        gnaritas 11y ago
        > What should they have done differently? Not given them control over his code just because it had their name on it. They could have taken it down, but they didn't, they just gave some company ownership of his module, not cool.
jsprogrammer 11y ago
There are no legal claims to be made over NPM package names. NPM has a policy for assigning names and third party attorneys don't get a say. Are you serious? >Seriously
- zippergz 11y ago
  What is the legal basis for the claim that NPM package names are somehow exempt from trademark and other law?
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    NPM does not offer packages as commerce. The package removed was not used in commerce. The KIK trademark does not claim any functionality related to the removed module. What legal basis is there that NPM packages are subject to trademark, or other law? NPM takes its names from the package.json file. The law has no say over what one may put into their package.json file.
    - profmonocle 11y ago
      Offering a product/service for free doesn't exempt it from trademark law. I couldn't make an open source word processor and call it "Microsoft Word".
      - jsprogrammer 11y ago
        The US Federal Government only has the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Kik, the project, does not engage in commerce. Also, npm (the package manager) is not a commercial vehicle. >I couldn't make an open source word processor and call it "Microsoft Word". Sure you could, you just couldn't use it in commerce.
- profmonocle 11y ago
  > There are no legal claims to be made over NPM package names. Why not? An NPM package name is the name of a piece of software, and software names are very much covered under trademark law.
vehementi 11y ago
> b) Expecting others to fight for one is lame. Either have the balls and fight or STFU. Is this a joke? In the world of hilariously over litigious rich companies crushing people with the threat of lawsuits? If you don't have the balls to defend your company vs patent trolls shut the fuck up? Hahaha.
- jlg23 11y ago
  He neither contacted a lawyer on his own to check whether kik's claim was valid nor did he contact npm while he still received all mails from kik to npm in Cc. He was just trying to sit it out and then caused a lot of collateral damage by pulling all his modules. I have dealt with a few such problems myself and more often than not a simple counter demand that the other party should substantiate their claim was enough to make the claim go away. And this is not even a multi-billion dollar patent troll - it was merely about a trademark, which every lawyer should be able to check in 30 minutes.

by jlg23 11y ago

gnaritas 11y ago

> Wrong, that is the prototype of a knee-jerk action. No it isn't; and he made that clear, he objects to their actions and is taking action of his own. > Last but not least, whining about it in public in the hope "something will happen" is pathetic. No, it's called protesting, and it's exactly the correct thing to do. Calling it pathetic is itself pathetic. > hat I'd suggest (though now it is too late): Rename the module to comply with legal claims, put up a new module under the old name that throws errors when called that describe the reason so developers see it and put shame on the threatening company/lawyers. You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable.

oldmanjay 11y ago
He made it clear he doesn't want to consider it a knee jerk, which has approximately zero relationship to whether it actually is. Protesting trademark law sounds like a lot of useless fun. It may be the "correct" thing to do, but it will have no result.
- st3v3r 11y ago
  He's not protesting trademark law; he's protesting that NPM just handed over his module to someone else.
- gnaritas 11y ago
  > He made it clear he doesn't want to consider it a knee jerk, which has approximately zero relationship to whether it actually is. A knee jerk reaction is an immediate unthinking emotional reaction; when you detail out your thought process in a lengthy well articulated blog post to explain your actions, it isn't knee jerk by definition. There was nothing at all unthinking about his actions or his protest. Point in fact, when someone explains to you why something isn't a knee jerk reaction, it automatically isn't. His making it clear has an approximately 100% relationship to the fact that it isn't.
MaulingMonkey 11y ago
> You're completely missing his point if you think this suggestion is at all reasonable. Is this the kik we're talking about? http://dev.kik.com/ http://dev.kik.com/ https://trademarks.justia.com/858/93/kik-85893307.html https://trademarks.justia.com/858/93/kik-85893307.html Is the point that kik should just give up on their company trademark?
- linksbro 11y ago
  Just because they've trademarked "kik" doesn't give them complete control over all instances of that 3 letter string in the world. See the 8 factors of trademark infringement, and trademark law in general; this is just a kik lawyer being threat happy.
  - gariany 11y ago
    +1 also US Trademark != the whole world. NPM should have handle this better!
    - detaro 11y ago
      US trademark is what's dangerous to NPM Inc., the US company running NPM. We don't know anything about how they "handled" it before it came to this, except that they did decide against the article author. What should they have done differently? It's not good that NPM-the-piece-of-infrastructure is vulnerable to this, maybe a registry like this shouldn't be under control of a single company, but we don't know enough to decide what options NPM Inc-the-company had. I hope they clean up/better communicate their policies around this, once they have them figured out (e.g. the package dispute page doesn't discuss trademarks).
      - gnaritas 11y ago
        > What should they have done differently? Not given them control over his code just because it had their name on it. They could have taken it down, but they didn't, they just gave some company ownership of his module, not cool.

jsprogrammer 11y ago

There are no legal claims to be made over NPM package names. NPM has a policy for assigning names and third party attorneys don't get a say. Are you serious? >Seriously

zippergz 11y ago
What is the legal basis for the claim that NPM package names are somehow exempt from trademark and other law?
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  NPM does not offer packages as commerce. The package removed was not used in commerce. The KIK trademark does not claim any functionality related to the removed module. What legal basis is there that NPM packages are subject to trademark, or other law? NPM takes its names from the package.json file. The law has no say over what one may put into their package.json file.
  - profmonocle 11y ago
    Offering a product/service for free doesn't exempt it from trademark law. I couldn't make an open source word processor and call it "Microsoft Word".
    - jsprogrammer 11y ago
      The US Federal Government only has the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Kik, the project, does not engage in commerce. Also, npm (the package manager) is not a commercial vehicle. >I couldn't make an open source word processor and call it "Microsoft Word". Sure you could, you just couldn't use it in commerce.
profmonocle 11y ago
> There are no legal claims to be made over NPM package names. Why not? An NPM package name is the name of a piece of software, and software names are very much covered under trademark law.

vehementi 11y ago

> b) Expecting others to fight for one is lame. Either have the balls and fight or STFU. Is this a joke? In the world of hilariously over litigious rich companies crushing people with the threat of lawsuits? If you don't have the balls to defend your company vs patent trolls shut the fuck up? Hahaha.

jlg23 11y ago
He neither contacted a lawyer on his own to check whether kik's claim was valid nor did he contact npm while he still received all mails from kik to npm in Cc. He was just trying to sit it out and then caused a lot of collateral damage by pulling all his modules. I have dealt with a few such problems myself and more often than not a simple counter demand that the other party should substantiate their claim was enough to make the claim go away. And this is not even a multi-billion dollar patent troll - it was merely about a trademark, which every lawyer should be able to check in 30 minutes.