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I wish for a world where people who would deny others the opportunity to profit from their creations are themselves denied. Let programmers sell t-shirts.

strogonoff 5y ago
Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing, and it becomes popular enough for me to notice, can I sue them? IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”. In music business, if person A publishes a song, and person B borrows that idea[0] and publishes a song that uses it or even alludes to it, and that song becomes popular, there’s a clear lawsuit against B. It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody. Isn’t it at least somewhat mind-boggling? [0] Bonus points if person B actually wrote the song independently and/or earlier than person A, but wasn’t running cameras to film the process.
- kristianc 5y ago
  > Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing. This isn’t analogous to the Ed Sheeran situation though. The analogy to the Ed Sheeran situation wouldn’t be someone copying software wholesale (obviously wrong) but another Twitter client using the ‘pull down to refresh timeline’ mechanism on an iOS app.
  - rectang 5y ago
    Twitter was granted a patent on "pull down to refresh". Patent law is a different areas of intellectual property law from copyright. The songwriting case is a copyright case. The analogy for Twitter would be copying source code, but not with full fidelity. If it's not "obviously wrong" that's because it's not verbatim; it's up to the court to decide whether there is enough similarity between the two for infringement to have occurred.
- rectang 5y ago
  > IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”. If they have violated patents, trademarks, or copyright, you can sue them for that. For example, if they reused your copy, or if they reused your proprietary source code. But you've constructed your argument around the "differently-branded" idea, suggesting that there is no copyright case. The analogue in music would be a different song. You can't sue Rihanna over Umbrella for ripping off Stairway To Heaven, because they are different. And yet, you don't argue with that copyright lawsuits over software apps should be outlawed. You won't deny programmers the right to sue, the way you would deny that right to musicians. Programmers are allowed to be first class citizens in your world, while musicians are relegated to second class. > It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody. That's incorrect. This is the realm of copyright. Patent laws are not relevant.
  - strogonoff 5y ago
    I mean if you write an app that walks and talks like my app, without stealing my source, it is fair game and I can do nothing. Unless I explicitly patented some specific aspects that you also implemented, or you stole my branding, or I can prove you stole my source code, you did not violate a single thing. Music business, meanwhile, behaves as if everything was patented by default.
    - rectang 5y ago
      You keep saying "patented" and it keeps being wrong. This is the realm of copyright. And yeah, if nobody violated any copyrights, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them. The analogy in music is: if nobody violated any copyright, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them. In other words, there is no difference. The fundamentals are exactly the same. Yet you're trying to equate a situation where you explicitly spell out that no infringements of any kind occurred, with a situation where copyright infringment is alleged to have occurred.
      - strogonoff 5y ago
        Exactly. The situation is the same fundamentally, yet copyright gone wild makes music business behave like software business would if everything was patented all the time. If you literally clone HN or LinkedIn (but call them something else), no one can sue you without having to prove you violated a patent or stole the source. No copyright violation occurred despite two identical products. If you compose a harmonic progression that bears semblance to one in a song by a famous pop star, you can and will be sued. You are guilty of violating copyright because your music sounds similar. Even if you call your song something else and the lyrics, the arrangement, the instruments used, everything is different. Even if no one can prove you stole any intellectual property. Etc. And the icing on the cake, now apparently even if you were first and they were inspired by your melody they still win if you did not bother to record your creative process while they faked a convincing recording of how they “came up” with your tune “on their own”.

strogonoff 5y ago

Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing, and it becomes popular enough for me to notice, can I sue them? IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”. In music business, if person A publishes a song, and person B borrows that idea[0] and publishes a song that uses it or even alludes to it, and that song becomes popular, there’s a clear lawsuit against B. It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody. Isn’t it at least somewhat mind-boggling? [0] Bonus points if person B actually wrote the song independently and/or earlier than person A, but wasn’t running cameras to film the process.

kristianc 5y ago
> Open-source software aside—if I publish a paid app, and later someone else borrows my idea and publishes a differently-branded paid app that does the same thing. This isn’t analogous to the Ed Sheeran situation though. The analogy to the Ed Sheeran situation wouldn’t be someone copying software wholesale (obviously wrong) but another Twitter client using the ‘pull down to refresh timeline’ mechanism on an iOS app.
- rectang 5y ago
  Twitter was granted a patent on "pull down to refresh". Patent law is a different areas of intellectual property law from copyright. The songwriting case is a copyright case. The analogy for Twitter would be copying source code, but not with full fidelity. If it's not "obviously wrong" that's because it's not verbatim; it's up to the court to decide whether there is enough similarity between the two for infringement to have occurred.
rectang 5y ago
> IANAL but pretty sure it’s a loud “not unless you have a patent that they violated”. If they have violated patents, trademarks, or copyright, you can sue them for that. For example, if they reused your copy, or if they reused your proprietary source code. But you've constructed your argument around the "differently-branded" idea, suggesting that there is no copyright case. The analogue in music would be a different song. You can't sue Rihanna over Umbrella for ripping off Stairway To Heaven, because they are different. And yet, you don't argue with that copyright lawsuits over software apps should be outlawed. You won't deny programmers the right to sue, the way you would deny that right to musicians. Programmers are allowed to be first class citizens in your world, while musicians are relegated to second class. > It’s like there’s an implicit patent of sorts on every melody. That's incorrect. This is the realm of copyright. Patent laws are not relevant.
- strogonoff 5y ago
  I mean if you write an app that walks and talks like my app, without stealing my source, it is fair game and I can do nothing. Unless I explicitly patented some specific aspects that you also implemented, or you stole my branding, or I can prove you stole my source code, you did not violate a single thing. Music business, meanwhile, behaves as if everything was patented by default.
  - rectang 5y ago
    You keep saying "patented" and it keeps being wrong. This is the realm of copyright. And yeah, if nobody violated any copyrights, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them. The analogy in music is: if nobody violated any copyright, patents, or trademarks of yours, you can't sue them. In other words, there is no difference. The fundamentals are exactly the same. Yet you're trying to equate a situation where you explicitly spell out that no infringements of any kind occurred, with a situation where copyright infringment is alleged to have occurred.
    - strogonoff 5y ago
      Exactly. The situation is the same fundamentally, yet copyright gone wild makes music business behave like software business would if everything was patented all the time. If you literally clone HN or LinkedIn (but call them something else), no one can sue you without having to prove you violated a patent or stole the source. No copyright violation occurred despite two identical products. If you compose a harmonic progression that bears semblance to one in a song by a famous pop star, you can and will be sued. You are guilty of violating copyright because your music sounds similar. Even if you call your song something else and the lyrics, the arrangement, the instruments used, everything is different. Even if no one can prove you stole any intellectual property. Etc. And the icing on the cake, now apparently even if you were first and they were inspired by your melody they still win if you did not bother to record your creative process while they faked a convincing recording of how they “came up” with your tune “on their own”.