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> 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 thi
by 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 agoTwitter 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.