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OK, let me clarify. Let's say a software vendor out there is making a ton of money with a product that exposes a certain API. Let's say I know a way to implem

OK, let me clarify. Let's say a software vendor out there is making a ton of money with a product that exposes a certain API. Let's say I know a way to implement that API in such a manner that its performance will be improved by an order of magnitude. (without using any patented method in my implementation) Can I put together that implementation and market it as a competitive product? In my experience, APIs of commercial products are disclosed under the terms of their licensing agreement. So, one could argue that I cannot market a competitive implementation, if the license terms I agreed to (to gain knowledge of the API itself) prevent me to do so.

harshreality 14y ago
If you agreed to a license or NDA prohibiting you from competing, that might be enforceable under contract law, but that is neither related to copyright nor patents. Assuming a case where there's no contract involved, patents are typically what would cause trouble. The original implementor will typically have a patent on some silly thing their software does, and you have to do that thing to make a compatible implementation, so they sue you for violating their patents.
- EternalFury 14y ago
  A lot of things out there are very dumbly implemented and you can implement them better easily. Patent-heavy code is fairly rare (maybe 10% of all enterprise applications) in my experience. To go back to my question, there are a lot of entrenched players out there who rely on an age-old user base to keep afloat. If you can provide a better implementation without asking them to rebuild their client applications, their customers will have an easy road to migrate towards your implementation.
krschultz 14y ago
I think if it were a publically available API you'd have a pretty fair shot at it. Start with the Google Maps or Google Charts one, it would be hard for them to turn around and sue you after having just won a case to the contrary.

harshreality 14y ago

If you agreed to a license or NDA prohibiting you from competing, that might be enforceable under contract law, but that is neither related to copyright nor patents. Assuming a case where there's no contract involved, patents are typically what would cause trouble. The original implementor will typically have a patent on some silly thing their software does, and you have to do that thing to make a compatible implementation, so they sue you for violating their patents.

EternalFury 14y ago
A lot of things out there are very dumbly implemented and you can implement them better easily. Patent-heavy code is fairly rare (maybe 10% of all enterprise applications) in my experience. To go back to my question, there are a lot of entrenched players out there who rely on an age-old user base to keep afloat. If you can provide a better implementation without asking them to rebuild their client applications, their customers will have an easy road to migrate towards your implementation.

krschultz 14y ago

I think if it were a publically available API you'd have a pretty fair shot at it. Start with the Google Maps or Google Charts one, it would be hard for them to turn around and sue you after having just won a case to the contrary.