10 ms·

Hey Nico, you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark

620 points by mmunj 3mo ago

https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095 https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

deleted 3mo ago
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jobs_throwaway 3mo ago
You didn't code it, you stole it from open source OS and compiler maintainers
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- rzmmm 3mo ago
  "before Bison version 1.24, Bison-generated parsers could be used only in programs that were free software." https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditio...
NickNaraghi 3mo ago
Gonna have to see the agent trace on that one.
kleiba2 3mo ago
Missing context.
xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago
Don't care. Competition is good for consumers.
- irdc 3mo ago
  When it plays fair, sure. Not when it steals.
- bogwog 3mo ago
  It is, but this isn't competition. This just copyright infringement. Competition would be if these people created their own software, possibly innovating and improving it in the process. That would encourage Papermark to improve their own offering, and would create an environment where these businesses are economically incentivized to improve the product or service. Nobody is incentivized to improve the software in question here. If copyright law doesn't protect anything, then improving your product is helping the competition and potentially hurting your business. Same is true if you're the people who did the infringement.
- dgb23 3mo ago
  When competition has no rules it resorts to people banging each other over their heads with clubs.
  - Eufrat 3mo ago
    People argue for less regulations until they are the ones eating crow.
- Eufrat 3mo ago
  Let’s not even talk about the feature. Copying the entire visual design itself with superficial tweaks is pretty brazen and, frankly, incredibly lazy.
  - augment_me 3mo ago
    Who cares if the consumer buys it and uses it? Information is worth nothing anymore, attention is, so if they manage to capture a larger audience somehow, they win.
    - otterley 3mo ago
      > Information is worth nothing anymore What do you do for a living? For most of us in the tech industry, information being worth something (because it takes creative and intellectual labor to produce) puts food on our tables.
      - augment_me 3mo ago
        LLMs produce about 95% of the code at my company and review about 70% of it for 3 years now. Our team has downsized from 40 to 8 people in this time. My creative labor is spent writing harnesses and wrappers. When there is enough of a data distribution on this, the LLMs will be able to do that as well. I have saved up a buffer in funds and bonds because it's going to be over at some point when the company moves from explore to exploit.
    - Eufrat 3mo ago
      This laissez-faire logic is insane, but I think it is telling that a lot of folks here seem to have this mindset and makes me empathize with increasingly nihilistic people.
- weregiraffe 3mo ago
  Stealing is the opposite of competition. It's in the same category as straight killing your competitors.
- onel 3mo ago
  I think it's important to care about these things though. You want competition but you also want fair competition
lenerdenator 3mo ago
Unless you don't copy the license terms, it's impossible to "steal" open-source code. That's... sort of the point.
- irdc 3mo ago
  Papermark is AGPL; Corgi must release all its changes.
  - lenerdenator 3mo ago
    That means they're not complying with the license terms. Which would be stealing. Like I said it would be.
    - irdc 3mo ago
      So we're in violent agreement then?
      - lenerdenator 3mo ago
        Brutally violent agreement. kicks shin, shakes hand
    - josephg 3mo ago
      Thats not what you said. You said "copy the license terms". Copying a license isn't the same as complying with one. Though it looks like in this case they didn't do either.
    - galangalalgol 3mo ago
      Copyright violation is not theft. Your effort to create something that can be effortlessly copied conveys to you no property. Society deems it beneficial to grant a time limited monopoly on copying it to spur innovation.
      - brookst 3mo ago
        You wouldn’t steal a car!
irdc 3mo ago
I'd suggest replacing that link with https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095 https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095
- tom_ 3mo ago
  And maybe reword the submission title while they're there, though the current one is well chosen for maximizing engagement I'm sure.
negergreger 3mo ago
[flagged]
- 1over137 3mo ago
  Did you do that for personal use or for billions upon billions of dolars?
- irdc 3mo ago
  AI is busy destroying my art and my livelihood. Fighting back is about as psychotic as drapetomania[0] was. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
  - jdietrich 3mo ago
    Has any group of workers ever "won" a long-term victory against a new technology? There are plenty of short-term concessions made in the face of powerful trade union opposition, but I can't think of any technology that was just stopped dead to appease workers with obsolete skills.
    - irdc 3mo ago
      That assumes we're talking about technologies that are legal and in some way beneficial. AI is basically large-scale copyright infringement. If allowed to continue, human authors (I'm including programmers here) will eventually just stop publishing, because why feed the machine that's busy replacing you? You're not even getting paid for it, because the magic box can do the same thing you can for cheaper. Thing is, everything AI produces is derivative; it cannot make anything truly original. Therefore widespread AI adoption will inevitably lead to scientific and cultural stagnation. So we'll have our magic box that can perform our every wish. And we'll all be worse off for it.
      - deleted 3mo ago
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olluk 3mo ago
Close your source if you don't want it to be read by LLM
- goldenarm 3mo ago
  That's not how licenses work, Papermark is AGPL
  - olluk 3mo ago
    I agree. It's a sarcasm of the new reality. What is copying vs writing from scratch? The line is blurred now, non-existent. You can ask an LLM to re-write any open source to a degree where there is no definite way to say that it's a derivative.
- ActionHank 3mo ago
  "If Disney wants to retain their rights to Mickey they really shouldn't be showing any images of him to the world."
  - deleted 3mo ago
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qwertytyyuu 3mo ago
Stealing it for your use case would take more effort vibe coding. The term is fine as is
wolttam 3mo ago
Folks... read the actual tweet. They literally didn't vibe code it - they copy-pasted another project.
- john_strinlai 3mo ago
  wait just a second, that's not how to use HN. youre supposed to read the title -> get upset and write a comment -> argue.
  - mdjxnxnxnd 3mo ago
    Rabble rabble rabble
- dools 3mo ago
  Vibe stole it?
  - josephg 3mo ago
    Probably just stole it by the looks of those screenshots.
    - dools 3mo ago
      Yeah I mean like git clone the repo then "hey LLM rip off this code, make no mistakes"
- Sanzig 3mo ago
  Yeah, the title that the OP chose is so sufficiently misleading that I think this one will need to be get changed by the mods. Seitz isn't opining on the ethics of vibe coding in his tweet, he's pointing out that Corgi literally just stole Papermark's AGPL codebase and passed it off as vibe coding.
  - jknoepfler 3mo ago
    It's nearly word-for-word the content of the tweet. Right at the top. It isn't misleading unless you literally don't even bother to open the linked content. Just ban users who comment without reading, I think that would go further to keep the quality of discussion high. The number of bots/trolls responding to the title without reading the content and missing the point entirely is astounding, honestly, and I don't think any of those posts are contributing to high quality discussion. We could do without those users. "but but but I can't/won't open twitter links" - then don't flap your yak-hole. Ignoring for a moment that the content has been reproduced in full in this thread, and another user has provided an alternative xcancel link.
carlosjobim 3mo ago
[flagged]
- elric 3mo ago
  What a load of crock. FOSS licenses were obviously written in the spirit of sharing with humans. Some later licenses made the license less amenable for sharing with corporations because some authors didn't feel like they were being treated fairly. Some authors today have similar feelings about their code being used by Gen AI. It is perfectly fine for authors to want to place restrictions on how they want others to use their work. > Step out of the FOSS swamp, step in to human dignity. What is that even supposed to mean?
  - jazz9k 3mo ago
    Developers gave their code out for free, but want to discriminate against people they don't like from using it in ways they dislike. The 'spirit of free software' is bullshit. It's software authoritarianism disguised as a noble cause.
    - ludamad 3mo ago
      Even so, what's wrong with this? They told you up front that they're going to discriminate. Students can use the code freely, businesses may struggle. People don't need to be fair.
    - xbar 3mo ago
      Don't use it.
  - JackFr 3mo ago
    > FOSS licenses were obviously written in the spirit of sharing with humans. That may be true, but I don't think it's obvious. What don't I know about the history of OSS?
    - deleted 3mo ago
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bix6 3mo ago
Ah another YC popcorn fest
feverzsj 3mo ago
LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.
Aurornis 3mo ago
Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here > Hey Nico, > It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code. > We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately. > It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud. > It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.
- secretsatan 3mo ago
  [flagged]
aboardRat4 3mo ago
It is not possible to steal something which doesn't obey conservation laws. Don't try to scam physics, is always wins.
blourvim 3mo ago
License in question: https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file It is AGPL, basically means: You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software. The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL, There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama. This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced
- rwarren63 3mo ago
  they probably need to sue to enforce this, I think this is actually going to be a larger issue than just corgi. copyright with these models really is just a mess
  - blourvim 3mo ago
    What I don't understand is that if a lawsuit happens, then must the plaintiff produce their source code for verification ? Even so a git tree is trivial to change into some other arbitrary code even if a license violation has occurred. I also heard if proven the consequences are that they would lose all revenue starting from when the violation has occured
  - m4rtink 3mo ago
    Just consider all model output AGPL. ;-)
deleted 3mo ago
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Chris2048 3mo ago
What's with this response in the Twitter thread??: "This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public" -- https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/2070126008347295967#m https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/207012600834729596... Is this just trolling?!
- andor 3mo ago
  Look at his other tweets, he seems to be a sociopathic extremist
  - greyb 3mo ago
    Or a troll? I'm so confused.
- roryirvine 3mo ago
  What a bizarre complaint! It's not bullying to first try to resolve the matter informally rather than jumping straight into legal action. Besides - who is this guy, and why does he think he's owed sight of any legal paperwork?
  - WA 3mo ago
    He seems to be a bullshitter and partially fake. Just take a look at his LinkedIn profile.
- l23k4 3mo ago
  [dead]
- slopinthebag 3mo ago
  Yes he's trolling. His bio is "CEO at @IronGorillaAI - proudly replacing white collar work with autonomous AI agents, one job at a time. American emigrant." and look at one of his recent posts lmao > THIS GUY ONLY WANTS 7 DAYS IN OFFICE. > At @IronGorillaAI, we run on the French Republican Calendar. > That’s 10 days a week. > We mandate all 10 in the office. > No hybrid. No remote. No negotiations. > If that sentence triggers you, you were never built for this anyway.
dwaltrip 3mo ago
What a scumbag. The replies from Nico are insane: “Team effort” “:praying-hands (x2)” And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness… I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.
- Sanzig 3mo ago
  I wonder if Nico will be feeling so cocky when Papermark gets their general counsel involved. The public Twitter shaming was clearly an attempt to resolve this without litigation, but hey, if that's how Nico truly feels, guess he gets to see what's behind door #2 (a massive bill for a legal retainer).
  - civet_java 3mo ago
    I am curious how this will play out legally. Surely UI enough isn't enough to prove that source code was plagiarised? In the event Papermark chooses to sue how will the defendant defend themselves short of presenting their own (possibly) closed source?
    - Sanzig 3mo ago
      Most likely, Papermark would compel Corgi to disclose the source code during discovery.
      - civet_java 3mo ago
        I didn't realise that one could forcibly require a competitor to disclose trade secrets. Now, INAL of course, but I would think this sort of mechanism would be quite gameable from both sides ( i) a wealthy competitor legally forcing a promising upstart to reveal source ii) a copycat working out some kind of arrangement where the code itself is licensed to them via shell company based overseas.)
        deleted 3mo ago
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lorey 3mo ago
Their response: > The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...] The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right. https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951 https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951
- nfw2 3mo ago
  I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ever had despite it just being a phone screen. I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it.
  - throwawalien 3mo ago
    I never made it to the interview phase because on the phone screen they mentioned they all work 7 days a week in office. nope nope nope nope.
    - cmgriffing 3mo ago
      We should thank companies for warning us during the interview process that they are so separated from reality (especially in the AI era) If AI can’t make them recognize a work life balance has value then it’s easy to see they don’t believe the “force multiplier” BS they are peddling
      - nfw2 3mo ago
Vaslo 3mo ago
The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.
- moralestapia 3mo ago
  Not IPable.
- nerdsniper 3mo ago
  Yes, written verbiage is subject to copyright. UI is also subject to copyright. The degree of similarity is astounding - this is not an edge case at all. The lack of understanding of copyright on HN does astound me, however. This isn't a case of convergent design (OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Word), this is identical word-for-word with a simple s/room/dataroom: > When enabled, folders uploaded to Rooms will be mirrored into 'All Documents' with the same structure. When disabled, all documents will be placed in a single folder named after the Room in 'All Documents! > This action cannot be undone. - All documents and folders will be permanently removed - All links and viewer access will be revoked - All analytics, audit logs, and Q&A data will be lost - Group permissions and branding will be deleted Those are clear copyright violations.
- Terretta 3mo ago
  IP and Copyright are two different concepts. Protected IP tends to break into trade secrets (protected by secrecy) and patents (protected by disclosure). Similarly, trade dress and trademarks are related but different, and in USA most Trademarks™ are not Registered® (although to get ® you generally use ™ along the way), and most trade dress is not either. See also: - clean room design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design - trade dress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress Amusingly, the packaging of a dress is trade dress, but the dress design itself isn't protected.
fantasizr 3mo ago
tech will do anything to normalize theft and call it innovation
- jimmydoe 3mo ago
  that's been the case for decades. everyone steals, you are a loser if you do it slow. just open the front door and take their tv.
dcow 3mo ago
When everyone is using LLMs to suggest IA, build basic UIs, dump out your startup in a day, etc. everything will look the same, even the source code. There will be no way to litigate this. Does it benefit society to force two companies to make their products look different? Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? Let the market decide which pencils it prefers.
- lelanthran 3mo ago
  Its sounds like you are taking a side.
- nerdsniper 3mo ago
  > Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? This would fall under patents (design patent at the very least), not copyright. Furthermore, the English verbiage between the two are literally exactly the same. That's a clear copyright violation.
  - fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago
    Changing a few words is thus enough to clear this case. What's the point of this exercise exactly? Both products are so incredibly derivative and boring that I find it very, very hard to care about this "case".
  - dcow 3mo ago
    If the UI was novel enough then there would be a software patent for it in this case. Anyway I’m not sure what your point is? Copyright is a dated concept and AI only reinforces that. Do you really believe the first one to prompt an AI in a specific way should be allowed to enforce exclusive ownership of the output? That’s insane.
contentkraft 3mo ago
Hey Claude, copy XYZ, make no mistakes. The meme keeps on memeing.
- b3lvedere 3mo ago
  What a wonderful world we live in where we can blame machines and extremely dilluted processes for all things we might do wrong.
bilekas 3mo ago
If we take what they're saying as fact and that they didn't copy and paste the code, but for all intents and purposes the LlM basically did reproduce the same code based on its crawling of the repo and not respecting the license. It would make a great civil case for the courts to decide. Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". Smells bad to me.
- PurelyApplied 3mo ago
  Yeah. Like, you can do all this without LLMs. "Oh, I didn't copy this open source repo with a restrictive license, I just found an fork that was identical except for having removed the license. So we used that." That's not how licenses work, and the license holder can absolutely tell you to get bent and/or pony up.
- alsetmusic 3mo ago
  > Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". A German court recently ruled that the runners of the agent are responsible for the agent's output. Not in your test environment, of course, but when it reaches the public.
CodesInChaos 3mo ago
I like the contradiction on the copycat page: > This action cannot be undone > Freezing is reversible from this page I assume being irreversible is an essential part of the freezing feature.
- PunchyHamster 3mo ago
  clearly the indication they didn't just copy but improve upon /s
NikxDa 3mo ago
From what I can tell, his argument seems to be that 1. no code was manually copied by a developer, and 2. all software in the same space copies off of each other But the big giveaway here is the exact same layout/copywriting on both products. Telling an LLM "write this product and build a 1:1 clone" is still copying by all sensible definitions. The fact that he argues nothing was copied is ridiculous.
- LoganDark 3mo ago
  He argues no code was copied.
- i000 3mo ago
  I guess that is at the core of Google vs Oracle, they copied the API kept the implementation clean-room. It was definitvely ruled that this was fair use. If fair use applies to something as strict as re-implementing an API, I would argue it applies to something much more elusive, like cloning UI/layout.
  - nerdsniper 3mo ago
    > I would argue [fair use] applies to something much more elusive, like cloning UI/layout. You would be very wrong in this argument. It's extremely well-established that corporate verbiage and UI are subject to copyright.
- bushido 3mo ago
  They're both boilerplate ShadCN from the looks of it: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks ShadCN is the most popular design system that AI automatically reaches for 90%+ times on its own. It's also the default most platforms like lovable, etc.
  - fouc 3mo ago
    I looked at that link and was unable to find any blocks that matched the 4 images? "Replicate Room Folders" and all
LunicLynx 3mo ago
Isn't this always the case? Most of the time you just don't know where AI stole it from?
Glyptodon 3mo ago
Is this related to the post where someone copied a UI and said as long as they changed 3% it's fine or totally unrelated?
liendolucas 3mo ago
Can someone give a bit more of context on this thread? I have no idea who Nico is nor what Papermark is or does. As an aside thought not related to the thread: Is it my perception or people are getting more used to not only vibe code things from existing solutions/projects but also "steal" open source code and do whatever the heck they want without complying morally/ethically/legally to the whole premise of open source? I have the feeling that more than ever open source violations are flourishing everywhere without any major legal consequences.
- Frieren 3mo ago
  Judges and governments are pro-business and anti-consumers, anti-citizens. Corporations are getting use to get away with anything and everything. Move fast and break things have changed to be about technology and it is now about the law. Uber popularized the trend, now everybody does the same. AI breaking copyright law is just part of that trend. With the new "laws are for losers" mentality we are in for a hard time.
- manwithopinions 3mo ago
  If you’re a business that deals in documents from external customers / partners, you use a data room like DocSend (by Dropbox) to share and receive documents with access management, analytics, auditing etc. Papermark is an open source alternative to DocSend. Papermark is very popular, as it is a much more cost effective alternative to DocSend — self-host or hosted. Corgi is a YC backed insurance startup that sells insurance to other YC startups. Nico is a founder. Recently they raised $100m at a ~$3bn valuation. They’re one of the darlings of YC right now, endless fawning over them. Since insurance underwriting involves lots of documents, Corgi were paying Dropbox thousands of dollars per month for DocSend. For some reason, Corgi ostensibly formed a team of 12 to build their own DocSend alternative, called Dataroom. And Corgi decided to make it into a SaaS product, pitched as a cheaper DocSend from just $10/month, in an already crowded space. Papermark noticed immediately that Corgi’s Dataroom used a lot of identical language and structure that Papermark’s open source product does. Papermark assumed that Corgi had taken Papermark’s work without attribution. Corgi have denied it, claiming it is just a coincidence that there are word for word matches between the products. Another YC startup, Delve, got caught doing what Corgi are accused of (and much more) which led to their removal from YC.
sublimefire 3mo ago
Being a bot of a devils advocate here. What I do not understand if it just looks similar, or implements the same features, or the code is actually copied and modified, i.e. the source is obviously from papermark. I think interfaces can be copied, thinking along the lines of implementing a protocol or a feature, so that would be legit. The UI looks very similar but if this is a totally different code then what? is it copyright infringement on the look and feel of the papermark brand? Clearly it should be an issue for the investors anyway as it “looks” like a copy in the tweet alone, it might mean this code will eventually become available from download to comply with agpl, which in turn wipes out any moat.
- nerdsniper 3mo ago
  The English verbiage is identical. That's a clear copyright violation even if the codebase is otherwise unique.
  - sublimefire 3mo ago
    I do not see how it is clear and which license is affected. People mix up agpl license terms which is not clear if being violated here and copyright based on branding. agpl does not cover the looks, it is all about the copy-left nature and code availability. I use the same licensing but struggle to so how could you enforce it if the code is different (not sure if it is different here).
steveBK123 3mo ago
I wonder if this is a bigger risk/more widespread in the AI era? Could a bad actor with a copy of someone else's proprietary source code train an LLM on it and come out with code that does not show enough evidence of theft?
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jadar 3mo ago
Plot twist, they both vibe coded it and now are pointing the finger at each other. /s
an0malous 3mo ago
Classic YC startup move
bushido 3mo ago
Both designs are nearly boilerplate ShadCN blocks/components, it looks nearly identical to this stuff: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks
dzonga 3mo ago
fraudulent people are gonna do more fraudulent shit. more news at 11. once the money dries up, these people will be on the next 'wave' without retrospective of what led to failures before. the past gets buried like it never existed.
- corgicatcher 3mo ago
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itomato 3mo ago
Why are people using what used to be Twitter in seriousness?
- claydugo 3mo ago
  Its where the community is despite the loud minority online pretending thats not the case
  - lynndotpy 3mo ago
    X is not even in the top 10 active user count. It ranked just above Quora and below Reddit. It's just not a super popular platform. X fans constantly have to denigrate everyone else as a "loud minority". Clearly, "the community" is not all on X. If it were, why would we be having conversations here on Hacker News? Anyways, the real answer you'll still see some X links here is that 1. A not insignificant amount of people in our industry are aligned with the X CEO and the positions he expresses through his accounts, Grok, etc., and 2. Pornography
    - kg 3mo ago
      In general the art community - not just limited to pornographers - seems to have stuck by X despite all the AI stuff. When I see people posting art it's almost always an X link, even for artists who have accounts on bsky or instagram or whatever.
      - lynndotpy 3mo ago
        I believe you, but our personal experiences are simply the opposite here. I do see X links occasionally but Instagram, BlueSky, and even Tumblr seem dominant. (Often with some presence on at least one of Patreon, Substack, Cara, or Kofi).
    - luisln 3mo ago
      [dead]
    - abc42 3mo ago
boesboes 3mo ago
I hope YC does the right thing here and pull funding of these ass wipes.
- handfuloflight 3mo ago
  And incinerate a nearly $3 billion valuation? Easier to mutter "great artists steal" to oneself and move on.
- an0malous 3mo ago
  This is exactly the kind of legal gray area move that YC companies like to take advantage of. It's not technically illegal for Reddit to fake users, for Airbnb to piggyback off Craigslist, for OpenAI to be a non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary, for PearAI to fork a competitor and relabel it as their own, for Flock to accidentally misidentify criminals, for Delve to fake SOCS compliance, or for Corgi to steal a competitor's product by having an LLM reproduce it instead of copying the code directly. If anything, YC will just help them with their legal defense.
- corgicatcher 3mo ago
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goobatrooba 3mo ago
One other Twitter comments reveals that they probably just asked an AI to copy Papermark. Evidenced by AI comments saying the page was aligned to the "reference" https://xcancel.com/ffumarola/status/2070479755892371713#m https://xcancel.com/ffumarola/status/2070479755892371713#m
- davidpapermill 3mo ago
  Is that real? Imagine they've taken the code out if so, difficult to verify.
- Aurornis 3mo ago
  Unreal. I had to go back to the original Tweet to confirm that screenshot wasn’t faked. The comment clearly says “Mirror’s the reference design’s” I don’t know how they could try to spin that as anything other than having an LLM launder someone’s code as a “reference design” Even if they try to argue that the “reference design” was Figma, the identical copy means they had to have copied Papermark into the reference design. The fact that they’re refusing to back down and admit they made a mistake is not a good sign for the company. I would not want to be one of their clients when it came to trying to dispute something.
  - Terretta 3mo ago
    Problem is law hasn't caught up with how easy this previously GOOJF practice became with LLMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
    - thayne 3mo ago
      You might be able to argue that using an AI trained on open source or source available code is not a clean room implementation. IANAL.
  - datsci_est_2015 3mo ago
    > The fact that they’re refusing to back down and admit they made a mistake is not a good sign for the company. I wish this were true, but the current political and corporate climate is that nearly anything is justifiable as long as you win, where winning is money or power. Fraud, corruption, extortion, etc. > I would not want to be one of their clients when it came to trying to dispute something. I find most b2b transactions are hostile, and the purpose of sales or customer success is to smooth over the hostility. Tremendously more true in the B2C space, and only accelerated by the aforementioned political and corporate climate. In other words, as long as their staff is charismatic / crafty enough, this “scandal” will slough right off.
nerdix 3mo ago
If you drop a screenshot of a web page into something like Figma Make, you can get it to produce a strikingly close replica. I get that vibe from the screenshots. They are very similar but not exactly the same. That's probably also why a lot of the copy is the same. Not getting your magic text generator to reword the copy for you is just sloppy.
- viccis 3mo ago
  AI will generally err on the side of slavishly copying any reference. I'm having this problem at work lately. Teammates will be asked to implement a new module for <new data integration> into the codebase, and they'll just point Claude at it and say "integrate <new thing> into this codebase" in one shot and what it will do is create a function for function clone of the first data integration's client, down to implementing copies of the private utility methods.
summarybot 3mo ago
What's the cost/benefit analysis on Papermark being open-source?
mmonaghan 3mo ago
ehhhh I'm not a corgi stan but I'd bet they just took the design & copy, which is totally fine imo. Often better to just take another's design instead of spend a bunch of cycles figuring out flow. This is doubly true for secondary pages/layouts/features. If I were them, I'd have changed copy and probably done some internal testing to smooth rough edges/improve where needed but sounds like they're moving as quickly as possible. If they did just copy paste code, straight to jail...
- nlitened 3mo ago
  Design (output of designers) and copy (output of copywriters) are subject to the same copyright law as code (output of programmers). Programmers are not the only people whose intellectual property is protected.
  - probabletrain 3mo ago
    I'd be very surprised if the very-similar-looking design of corgi's product breaches any copyright law, copyright of design or layout is much more finicky than copyright of code. This seems like more of a moral issue than a legal one.
renoir 3mo ago
[flagged]
- stronglikedan 3mo ago
  that's quite the stretch
tsunamifury 3mo ago
With LLMs being able to replicate simple SaaS tools we are going to see a lot of "you stole my idea" and regardless of it being right or wrong, the judgement of time tends to be defensibility. I wouldn't bet on small scale software defensibility in the future. Just being practical...
tsunamifury 3mo ago
Customer aquisitions and retention has always been the moat over code. As much as this forum might have a hard time accepting that
arlattimore 3mo ago
Yuck, a little vomit just came up :(
euio757 3mo ago
> Sorry for the delayed response to this, I just woke up Posted 7:52 am https://x.com/i/status/2070158170937581951 https://x.com/i/status/2070158170937581951 Ahhh, that explains now why working 7 days a week is necessary for this Manhattan-project-level startup, he's not ‘Grindmaxxing’ by waking up with the 5 AM club every day! (Context for folks not terminally online: https://x.com/i/status/2061139112426623054 https://x.com/i/status/2061139112426623054)
kshacker 3mo ago
There appears to have been a cease and desist issued by Corgi to Papermark: https://x.com/danielmerja/status/2070264877017350492?s=46 https://x.com/danielmerja/status/2070264877017350492?s=46 They want the tweet alleging copy to be deleted.
- manwithopinions 3mo ago
  Peter is currently threatening me with a defamation suit, he seems to be quite the litigious man. My defamation suit is because I wrote a post summarizing my comments from this thread about Corgi: https://reticulating.substack.com/p/ycombinators-corgi-insurance-a-26 https://reticulating.substack.com/p/ycombinators-corgi-insur... I guess when you're working 7 days a week you've gotta find something to fill the time with.
  - rwarren63 3mo ago
    who is peter? why did they send you a cease and desist?
    - manwithopinions 3mo ago
      Peter Skaliy, Head of Legal at Corgi, same person who sent the cease and desist to people on Twitter, is filing a suit against me for defamation because of that Substack post. "Corgi builds insurance structures that allow us to best serve the needs of our customers. For technology companies, operating a technology liability line through a Risk Retention Group is not unusual, improper, or exotic; it is a standard insurance structure for specialty liability risks where similarly situated businesses benefit from tailored underwriting, specialized coverage, and risk alignment. The suggestion that Corgi customers are unknowingly taking on “balance sheet risk,” member-assessment risk, or responsibility for unrelated insureds’ liabilities is false. Your draft’s statement that “Corgi will help you share that risk,” combined with the question whether customers understand the risk of other companies in the group, does not merely describe RRGs in the abstract. It falsely implies that Corgi leaves customers exposed to open ended financial liability for other insureds. That implication is defamatory and false. RRGs are regulated insurance carriers subject to financial, reserve, governance, and regulatory requirements. They are not informal risk sharing clubs where policyholders unknowingly become responsible for each other’s balance sheets. The RRG structure unique to Corgi. Major insurance groups use different insurer structures for different classes of risk because different risks are best served by different structures. Berkshire Hathaway, which the draft itself invokes, has affiliated insurance operations involving Risk Retention Groups in specialty liability markets, including medical and legal professional liability. That underscores the point: RRGs are a widely recognized insurance structure for specialty liability lines, and allow insurers to provide more tailored coverage options rather than issuing a generic policy. The draft’s statement that Corgi “innovated with AI in a regulated industry by cutting corners” is also false and defamatory. Corgi raised millions pre-revenue and spent nearly two years building and obtaining regulatory approvals for its insurance operations, including approvals and requirements relating to reserves, pricing, liquidity, governance, and compliance. That is the opposite of “cutting corners.” Any allegation that Corgi used AI to evade regulatory approval, underwriting standards, reserve requirements, pricing controls, liquidity controls, or other compliance obligations is false. Any article suggesting otherwise, including by implying that Corgi misleads customers, conceals the RRG structure, exposes policyholders to undisclosed balance-sheet risk, or uses RRGs and AI to evade proper underwriting or regulatory obligations, is false and highly damaging. To be clear, if you publish these false statements or defamatory implications, Corgi will sue you personally and will pursue all available claims and remedies against you and any other responsible parties. Corgi has enforced its rights before and will do so again. You should not mistake this for an abstract legal reservation."
retornam 3mo ago
I used to have a lot of respect for YC and the kind of founders it used to attract. However, over the past few years, they have started attracting a certain type of founder that most people wouldn’t associate with. The decline in the quality of YC's founder pool and founder reputation is tarnishing its brand, but I doubt anyone there realizes it, or is willing to publicly admit it. It’s egregious that a portfolio company passed off clear AGPL code as its own and doubled down on defending their actions when there was clear evidence showing that they had indeed copied the code. Any well-meaning person should call this out, including anyone who cares deeply about YC and its reputation. If a founder is willing to lie about something like this, imagine the other things he would lie about?
- ValentineC 3mo ago
  > However, over the past few years, they have started attracting a certain type of founder that most people wouldn’t associate with. I don't follow YC acceptance enough to be able to see a trend, but there's one founder in one of 2025's batches that I feel the same way about: dodgy, questionable sense of ethics, never stops to consider whether they're in the wrong or how their actions may affect others detrimentally. Then again, that could be a trait of a potentially successful founder. Or a psychopath.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
oscgam1 3mo ago
[dead]
zftnb666 3mo ago
"Vibe coded" is the new "I built this from scratch" except with more git blame
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
fadenjfbc 3mo ago
[dead]

620 points by mmunj 3mo ago

https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095 https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

jobs_throwaway 3mo ago

You didn't code it, you stole it from open source OS and compiler maintainers

deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
rzmmm 3mo ago
"before Bison version 1.24, Bison-generated parsers could be used only in programs that were free software." https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditions.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/html_node/Conditio...

NickNaraghi 3mo ago

Gonna have to see the agent trace on that one.

kleiba2 3mo ago

Missing context.

xyzsparetimexyz 3mo ago

Don't care. Competition is good for consumers.

irdc 3mo ago
When it plays fair, sure. Not when it steals.
bogwog 3mo ago
It is, but this isn't competition. This just copyright infringement. Competition would be if these people created their own software, possibly innovating and improving it in the process. That would encourage Papermark to improve their own offering, and would create an environment where these businesses are economically incentivized to improve the product or service. Nobody is incentivized to improve the software in question here. If copyright law doesn't protect anything, then improving your product is helping the competition and potentially hurting your business. Same is true if you're the people who did the infringement.
dgb23 3mo ago
When competition has no rules it resorts to people banging each other over their heads with clubs.
- Eufrat 3mo ago
  People argue for less regulations until they are the ones eating crow.
Eufrat 3mo ago
Let’s not even talk about the feature. Copying the entire visual design itself with superficial tweaks is pretty brazen and, frankly, incredibly lazy.
- augment_me 3mo ago
  Who cares if the consumer buys it and uses it? Information is worth nothing anymore, attention is, so if they manage to capture a larger audience somehow, they win.
  - otterley 3mo ago
    > Information is worth nothing anymore What do you do for a living? For most of us in the tech industry, information being worth something (because it takes creative and intellectual labor to produce) puts food on our tables.
    - augment_me 3mo ago
      LLMs produce about 95% of the code at my company and review about 70% of it for 3 years now. Our team has downsized from 40 to 8 people in this time. My creative labor is spent writing harnesses and wrappers. When there is enough of a data distribution on this, the LLMs will be able to do that as well. I have saved up a buffer in funds and bonds because it's going to be over at some point when the company moves from explore to exploit.
  - Eufrat 3mo ago
    This laissez-faire logic is insane, but I think it is telling that a lot of folks here seem to have this mindset and makes me empathize with increasingly nihilistic people.
weregiraffe 3mo ago
Stealing is the opposite of competition. It's in the same category as straight killing your competitors.
onel 3mo ago
I think it's important to care about these things though. You want competition but you also want fair competition

lenerdenator 3mo ago

Unless you don't copy the license terms, it's impossible to "steal" open-source code. That's... sort of the point.

irdc 3mo ago
Papermark is AGPL; Corgi must release all its changes.
- lenerdenator 3mo ago
  That means they're not complying with the license terms. Which would be stealing. Like I said it would be.
  - irdc 3mo ago
    So we're in violent agreement then?
    - lenerdenator 3mo ago
      Brutally violent agreement. kicks shin, shakes hand
  - josephg 3mo ago
    Thats not what you said. You said "copy the license terms". Copying a license isn't the same as complying with one. Though it looks like in this case they didn't do either.
  - galangalalgol 3mo ago
    Copyright violation is not theft. Your effort to create something that can be effortlessly copied conveys to you no property. Society deems it beneficial to grant a time limited monopoly on copying it to spur innovation.
    - brookst 3mo ago
      You wouldn’t steal a car!

irdc 3mo ago

I'd suggest replacing that link with https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095 https://xcancel.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

tom_ 3mo ago
And maybe reword the submission title while they're there, though the current one is well chosen for maximizing engagement I'm sure.

negergreger 3mo ago

[flagged]

1over137 3mo ago
Did you do that for personal use or for billions upon billions of dolars?
irdc 3mo ago
AI is busy destroying my art and my livelihood. Fighting back is about as psychotic as drapetomania[0] was. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania
- jdietrich 3mo ago
  Has any group of workers ever "won" a long-term victory against a new technology? There are plenty of short-term concessions made in the face of powerful trade union opposition, but I can't think of any technology that was just stopped dead to appease workers with obsolete skills.
  - irdc 3mo ago
    That assumes we're talking about technologies that are legal and in some way beneficial. AI is basically large-scale copyright infringement. If allowed to continue, human authors (I'm including programmers here) will eventually just stop publishing, because why feed the machine that's busy replacing you? You're not even getting paid for it, because the magic box can do the same thing you can for cheaper. Thing is, everything AI produces is derivative; it cannot make anything truly original. Therefore widespread AI adoption will inevitably lead to scientific and cultural stagnation. So we'll have our magic box that can perform our every wish. And we'll all be worse off for it.
    - deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
3mo ago

olluk 3mo ago

Close your source if you don't want it to be read by LLM

goldenarm 3mo ago
That's not how licenses work, Papermark is AGPL
- olluk 3mo ago
  I agree. It's a sarcasm of the new reality. What is copying vs writing from scratch? The line is blurred now, non-existent. You can ask an LLM to re-write any open source to a degree where there is no definite way to say that it's a derivative.
ActionHank 3mo ago
"If Disney wants to retain their rights to Mickey they really shouldn't be showing any images of him to the world."
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]

qwertytyyuu 3mo ago

Stealing it for your use case would take more effort vibe coding. The term is fine as is

wolttam 3mo ago

Folks... read the actual tweet. They literally didn't vibe code it - they copy-pasted another project.

john_strinlai 3mo ago
wait just a second, that's not how to use HN. youre supposed to read the title -> get upset and write a comment -> argue.
- mdjxnxnxnd 3mo ago
  Rabble rabble rabble
dools 3mo ago
Vibe stole it?
- josephg 3mo ago
  Probably just stole it by the looks of those screenshots.
  - dools 3mo ago
    Yeah I mean like git clone the repo then "hey LLM rip off this code, make no mistakes"
Sanzig 3mo ago
Yeah, the title that the OP chose is so sufficiently misleading that I think this one will need to be get changed by the mods. Seitz isn't opining on the ethics of vibe coding in his tweet, he's pointing out that Corgi literally just stole Papermark's AGPL codebase and passed it off as vibe coding.
- jknoepfler 3mo ago
  It's nearly word-for-word the content of the tweet. Right at the top. It isn't misleading unless you literally don't even bother to open the linked content. Just ban users who comment without reading, I think that would go further to keep the quality of discussion high. The number of bots/trolls responding to the title without reading the content and missing the point entirely is astounding, honestly, and I don't think any of those posts are contributing to high quality discussion. We could do without those users. "but but but I can't/won't open twitter links" - then don't flap your yak-hole. Ignoring for a moment that the content has been reproduced in full in this thread, and another user has provided an alternative xcancel link.

carlosjobim 3mo ago

[flagged]

elric 3mo ago
What a load of crock. FOSS licenses were obviously written in the spirit of sharing with humans. Some later licenses made the license less amenable for sharing with corporations because some authors didn't feel like they were being treated fairly. Some authors today have similar feelings about their code being used by Gen AI. It is perfectly fine for authors to want to place restrictions on how they want others to use their work. > Step out of the FOSS swamp, step in to human dignity. What is that even supposed to mean?
- jazz9k 3mo ago
  Developers gave their code out for free, but want to discriminate against people they don't like from using it in ways they dislike. The 'spirit of free software' is bullshit. It's software authoritarianism disguised as a noble cause.
  - ludamad 3mo ago
    Even so, what's wrong with this? They told you up front that they're going to discriminate. Students can use the code freely, businesses may struggle. People don't need to be fair.
  - xbar 3mo ago
    Don't use it.
- JackFr 3mo ago
  > FOSS licenses were obviously written in the spirit of sharing with humans. That may be true, but I don't think it's obvious. What don't I know about the history of OSS?
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

bix6 3mo ago

Ah another YC popcorn fest

feverzsj 3mo ago

LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.

Aurornis 3mo ago

Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here > Hey Nico, > It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code. > We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately. > It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud. > It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.

secretsatan 3mo ago
[flagged]

aboardRat4 3mo ago

It is not possible to steal something which doesn't obey conservation laws. Don't try to scam physics, is always wins.

blourvim 3mo ago

License in question: https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file https://github.com/papermark/papermark?tab=License-1-ov-file It is AGPL, basically means: You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software. The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL, There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama. This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced

rwarren63 3mo ago
they probably need to sue to enforce this, I think this is actually going to be a larger issue than just corgi. copyright with these models really is just a mess
- blourvim 3mo ago
  What I don't understand is that if a lawsuit happens, then must the plaintiff produce their source code for verification ? Even so a git tree is trivial to change into some other arbitrary code even if a license violation has occurred. I also heard if proven the consequences are that they would lose all revenue starting from when the violation has occured
- m4rtink 3mo ago
  Just consider all model output AGPL. ;-)

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

Chris2048 3mo ago

What's with this response in the Twitter thread??: "This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public" -- https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/2070126008347295967#m https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/207012600834729596... Is this just trolling?!

andor 3mo ago
Look at his other tweets, he seems to be a sociopathic extremist
- greyb 3mo ago
  Or a troll? I'm so confused.
roryirvine 3mo ago
What a bizarre complaint! It's not bullying to first try to resolve the matter informally rather than jumping straight into legal action. Besides - who is this guy, and why does he think he's owed sight of any legal paperwork?
- WA 3mo ago
  He seems to be a bullshitter and partially fake. Just take a look at his LinkedIn profile.
l23k4 3mo ago
[dead]
slopinthebag 3mo ago
Yes he's trolling. His bio is "CEO at @IronGorillaAI - proudly replacing white collar work with autonomous AI agents, one job at a time. American emigrant." and look at one of his recent posts lmao > THIS GUY ONLY WANTS 7 DAYS IN OFFICE. > At @IronGorillaAI, we run on the French Republican Calendar. > That’s 10 days a week. > We mandate all 10 in the office. > No hybrid. No remote. No negotiations. > If that sentence triggers you, you were never built for this anyway.

dwaltrip 3mo ago

What a scumbag. The replies from Nico are insane: “Team effort” “:praying-hands (x2)” And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness… I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.

Sanzig 3mo ago
I wonder if Nico will be feeling so cocky when Papermark gets their general counsel involved. The public Twitter shaming was clearly an attempt to resolve this without litigation, but hey, if that's how Nico truly feels, guess he gets to see what's behind door #2 (a massive bill for a legal retainer).
- civet_java 3mo ago
  I am curious how this will play out legally. Surely UI enough isn't enough to prove that source code was plagiarised? In the event Papermark chooses to sue how will the defendant defend themselves short of presenting their own (possibly) closed source?
  - Sanzig 3mo ago
    Most likely, Papermark would compel Corgi to disclose the source code during discovery.
    - civet_java 3mo ago
      I didn't realise that one could forcibly require a competitor to disclose trade secrets. Now, INAL of course, but I would think this sort of mechanism would be quite gameable from both sides ( i) a wealthy competitor legally forcing a promising upstart to reveal source ii) a copycat working out some kind of arrangement where the code itself is licensed to them via shell company based overseas.)
      - deleted 3mo ago
        [deleted]

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

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lorey 3mo ago

Their response: > The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...] The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right. https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951 https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951

nfw2 3mo ago
I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ever had despite it just being a phone screen. I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it.
- throwawalien 3mo ago
  I never made it to the interview phase because on the phone screen they mentioned they all work 7 days a week in office. nope nope nope nope.
  - cmgriffing 3mo ago
    We should thank companies for warning us during the interview process that they are so separated from reality (especially in the AI era) If AI can’t make them recognize a work life balance has value then it’s easy to see they don’t believe the “force multiplier” BS they are peddling
    - nfw2 3mo ago

Vaslo 3mo ago

The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.

moralestapia 3mo ago
Not IPable.
nerdsniper 3mo ago
Yes, written verbiage is subject to copyright. UI is also subject to copyright. The degree of similarity is astounding - this is not an edge case at all. The lack of understanding of copyright on HN does astound me, however. This isn't a case of convergent design (OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Word), this is identical word-for-word with a simple s/room/dataroom: > When enabled, folders uploaded to Rooms will be mirrored into 'All Documents' with the same structure. When disabled, all documents will be placed in a single folder named after the Room in 'All Documents! > This action cannot be undone. - All documents and folders will be permanently removed - All links and viewer access will be revoked - All analytics, audit logs, and Q&A data will be lost - Group permissions and branding will be deleted Those are clear copyright violations.
Terretta 3mo ago
IP and Copyright are two different concepts. Protected IP tends to break into trade secrets (protected by secrecy) and patents (protected by disclosure). Similarly, trade dress and trademarks are related but different, and in USA most Trademarks™ are not Registered® (although to get ® you generally use ™ along the way), and most trade dress is not either. See also: - clean room design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design - trade dress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress Amusingly, the packaging of a dress is trade dress, but the dress design itself isn't protected.

fantasizr 3mo ago

tech will do anything to normalize theft and call it innovation

jimmydoe 3mo ago
that's been the case for decades. everyone steals, you are a loser if you do it slow. just open the front door and take their tv.

dcow 3mo ago

When everyone is using LLMs to suggest IA, build basic UIs, dump out your startup in a day, etc. everything will look the same, even the source code. There will be no way to litigate this. Does it benefit society to force two companies to make their products look different? Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? Let the market decide which pencils it prefers.

lelanthran 3mo ago
Its sounds like you are taking a side.
nerdsniper 3mo ago
> Where’s the outrage over all basic pencils looking the same? This would fall under patents (design patent at the very least), not copyright. Furthermore, the English verbiage between the two are literally exactly the same. That's a clear copyright violation.
- fsddfsdfssdf 3mo ago
  Changing a few words is thus enough to clear this case. What's the point of this exercise exactly? Both products are so incredibly derivative and boring that I find it very, very hard to care about this "case".
- dcow 3mo ago
  If the UI was novel enough then there would be a software patent for it in this case. Anyway I’m not sure what your point is? Copyright is a dated concept and AI only reinforces that. Do you really believe the first one to prompt an AI in a specific way should be allowed to enforce exclusive ownership of the output? That’s insane.

contentkraft 3mo ago

Hey Claude, copy XYZ, make no mistakes. The meme keeps on memeing.

b3lvedere 3mo ago
What a wonderful world we live in where we can blame machines and extremely dilluted processes for all things we might do wrong.

bilekas 3mo ago

If we take what they're saying as fact and that they didn't copy and paste the code, but for all intents and purposes the LlM basically did reproduce the same code based on its crawling of the repo and not respecting the license. It would make a great civil case for the courts to decide. Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". Smells bad to me.

PurelyApplied 3mo ago
Yeah. Like, you can do all this without LLMs. "Oh, I didn't copy this open source repo with a restrictive license, I just found an fork that was identical except for having removed the license. So we used that." That's not how licenses work, and the license holder can absolutely tell you to get bent and/or pony up.
alsetmusic 3mo ago
> Their defence seems to be "well we asked an LLM to reproduce your work, so 'WE' never copied your code". A German court recently ruled that the runners of the agent are responsible for the agent's output. Not in your test environment, of course, but when it reaches the public.

CodesInChaos 3mo ago

I like the contradiction on the copycat page: > This action cannot be undone > Freezing is reversible from this page I assume being irreversible is an essential part of the freezing feature.

PunchyHamster 3mo ago
clearly the indication they didn't just copy but improve upon /s

NikxDa 3mo ago

From what I can tell, his argument seems to be that 1. no code was manually copied by a developer, and 2. all software in the same space copies off of each other But the big giveaway here is the exact same layout/copywriting on both products. Telling an LLM "write this product and build a 1:1 clone" is still copying by all sensible definitions. The fact that he argues nothing was copied is ridiculous.

LoganDark 3mo ago
He argues no code was copied.
i000 3mo ago
I guess that is at the core of Google vs Oracle, they copied the API kept the implementation clean-room. It was definitvely ruled that this was fair use. If fair use applies to something as strict as re-implementing an API, I would argue it applies to something much more elusive, like cloning UI/layout.
- nerdsniper 3mo ago
  > I would argue [fair use] applies to something much more elusive, like cloning UI/layout. You would be very wrong in this argument. It's extremely well-established that corporate verbiage and UI are subject to copyright.
bushido 3mo ago
They're both boilerplate ShadCN from the looks of it: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks ShadCN is the most popular design system that AI automatically reaches for 90%+ times on its own. It's also the default most platforms like lovable, etc.
- fouc 3mo ago
  I looked at that link and was unable to find any blocks that matched the 4 images? "Replicate Room Folders" and all

LunicLynx 3mo ago

Isn't this always the case? Most of the time you just don't know where AI stole it from?

Glyptodon 3mo ago

Is this related to the post where someone copied a UI and said as long as they changed 3% it's fine or totally unrelated?

liendolucas 3mo ago

Can someone give a bit more of context on this thread? I have no idea who Nico is nor what Papermark is or does. As an aside thought not related to the thread: Is it my perception or people are getting more used to not only vibe code things from existing solutions/projects but also "steal" open source code and do whatever the heck they want without complying morally/ethically/legally to the whole premise of open source? I have the feeling that more than ever open source violations are flourishing everywhere without any major legal consequences.

Frieren 3mo ago
Judges and governments are pro-business and anti-consumers, anti-citizens. Corporations are getting use to get away with anything and everything. Move fast and break things have changed to be about technology and it is now about the law. Uber popularized the trend, now everybody does the same. AI breaking copyright law is just part of that trend. With the new "laws are for losers" mentality we are in for a hard time.
manwithopinions 3mo ago
If you’re a business that deals in documents from external customers / partners, you use a data room like DocSend (by Dropbox) to share and receive documents with access management, analytics, auditing etc. Papermark is an open source alternative to DocSend. Papermark is very popular, as it is a much more cost effective alternative to DocSend — self-host or hosted. Corgi is a YC backed insurance startup that sells insurance to other YC startups. Nico is a founder. Recently they raised $100m at a ~$3bn valuation. They’re one of the darlings of YC right now, endless fawning over them. Since insurance underwriting involves lots of documents, Corgi were paying Dropbox thousands of dollars per month for DocSend. For some reason, Corgi ostensibly formed a team of 12 to build their own DocSend alternative, called Dataroom. And Corgi decided to make it into a SaaS product, pitched as a cheaper DocSend from just $10/month, in an already crowded space. Papermark noticed immediately that Corgi’s Dataroom used a lot of identical language and structure that Papermark’s open source product does. Papermark assumed that Corgi had taken Papermark’s work without attribution. Corgi have denied it, claiming it is just a coincidence that there are word for word matches between the products. Another YC startup, Delve, got caught doing what Corgi are accused of (and much more) which led to their removal from YC.

sublimefire 3mo ago

Being a bot of a devils advocate here. What I do not understand if it just looks similar, or implements the same features, or the code is actually copied and modified, i.e. the source is obviously from papermark. I think interfaces can be copied, thinking along the lines of implementing a protocol or a feature, so that would be legit. The UI looks very similar but if this is a totally different code then what? is it copyright infringement on the look and feel of the papermark brand? Clearly it should be an issue for the investors anyway as it “looks” like a copy in the tweet alone, it might mean this code will eventually become available from download to comply with agpl, which in turn wipes out any moat.

nerdsniper 3mo ago
The English verbiage is identical. That's a clear copyright violation even if the codebase is otherwise unique.
- sublimefire 3mo ago
  I do not see how it is clear and which license is affected. People mix up agpl license terms which is not clear if being violated here and copyright based on branding. agpl does not cover the looks, it is all about the copy-left nature and code availability. I use the same licensing but struggle to so how could you enforce it if the code is different (not sure if it is different here).

steveBK123 3mo ago

I wonder if this is a bigger risk/more widespread in the AI era? Could a bad actor with a copy of someone else's proprietary source code train an LLM on it and come out with code that does not show enough evidence of theft?

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

jadar 3mo ago

Plot twist, they both vibe coded it and now are pointing the finger at each other. /s

an0malous 3mo ago

Classic YC startup move

bushido 3mo ago

Both designs are nearly boilerplate ShadCN blocks/components, it looks nearly identical to this stuff: https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks https://ui.shadcn.com/blocks

dzonga 3mo ago

fraudulent people are gonna do more fraudulent shit. more news at 11. once the money dries up, these people will be on the next 'wave' without retrospective of what led to failures before. the past gets buried like it never existed.

corgicatcher 3mo ago
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itomato 3mo ago

Why are people using what used to be Twitter in seriousness?

claydugo 3mo ago
Its where the community is despite the loud minority online pretending thats not the case
- lynndotpy 3mo ago
  X is not even in the top 10 active user count. It ranked just above Quora and below Reddit. It's just not a super popular platform. X fans constantly have to denigrate everyone else as a "loud minority". Clearly, "the community" is not all on X. If it were, why would we be having conversations here on Hacker News? Anyways, the real answer you'll still see some X links here is that 1. A not insignificant amount of people in our industry are aligned with the X CEO and the positions he expresses through his accounts, Grok, etc., and 2. Pornography
  - kg 3mo ago
    In general the art community - not just limited to pornographers - seems to have stuck by X despite all the AI stuff. When I see people posting art it's almost always an X link, even for artists who have accounts on bsky or instagram or whatever.
    - lynndotpy 3mo ago
      I believe you, but our personal experiences are simply the opposite here. I do see X links occasionally but Instagram, BlueSky, and even Tumblr seem dominant. (Often with some presence on at least one of Patreon, Substack, Cara, or Kofi).
  - luisln 3mo ago
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  - abc42 3mo ago

boesboes 3mo ago

I hope YC does the right thing here and pull funding of these ass wipes.

handfuloflight 3mo ago
And incinerate a nearly $3 billion valuation? Easier to mutter "great artists steal" to oneself and move on.
an0malous 3mo ago
This is exactly the kind of legal gray area move that YC companies like to take advantage of. It's not technically illegal for Reddit to fake users, for Airbnb to piggyback off Craigslist, for OpenAI to be a non-profit with a for-profit subsidiary, for PearAI to fork a competitor and relabel it as their own, for Flock to accidentally misidentify criminals, for Delve to fake SOCS compliance, or for Corgi to steal a competitor's product by having an LLM reproduce it instead of copying the code directly. If anything, YC will just help them with their legal defense.
corgicatcher 3mo ago
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goobatrooba 3mo ago

One other Twitter comments reveals that they probably just asked an AI to copy Papermark. Evidenced by AI comments saying the page was aligned to the "reference" https://xcancel.com/ffumarola/status/2070479755892371713#m https://xcancel.com/ffumarola/status/2070479755892371713#m

davidpapermill 3mo ago
Is that real? Imagine they've taken the code out if so, difficult to verify.
Aurornis 3mo ago
Unreal. I had to go back to the original Tweet to confirm that screenshot wasn’t faked. The comment clearly says “Mirror’s the reference design’s” I don’t know how they could try to spin that as anything other than having an LLM launder someone’s code as a “reference design” Even if they try to argue that the “reference design” was Figma, the identical copy means they had to have copied Papermark into the reference design. The fact that they’re refusing to back down and admit they made a mistake is not a good sign for the company. I would not want to be one of their clients when it came to trying to dispute something.
- Terretta 3mo ago
  Problem is law hasn't caught up with how easy this previously GOOJF practice became with LLMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
  - thayne 3mo ago
    You might be able to argue that using an AI trained on open source or source available code is not a clean room implementation. IANAL.
- datsci_est_2015 3mo ago
  > The fact that they’re refusing to back down and admit they made a mistake is not a good sign for the company. I wish this were true, but the current political and corporate climate is that nearly anything is justifiable as long as you win, where winning is money or power. Fraud, corruption, extortion, etc. > I would not want to be one of their clients when it came to trying to dispute something. I find most b2b transactions are hostile, and the purpose of sales or customer success is to smooth over the hostility. Tremendously more true in the B2C space, and only accelerated by the aforementioned political and corporate climate. In other words, as long as their staff is charismatic / crafty enough, this “scandal” will slough right off.

nerdix 3mo ago

If you drop a screenshot of a web page into something like Figma Make, you can get it to produce a strikingly close replica. I get that vibe from the screenshots. They are very similar but not exactly the same. That's probably also why a lot of the copy is the same. Not getting your magic text generator to reword the copy for you is just sloppy.

viccis 3mo ago
AI will generally err on the side of slavishly copying any reference. I'm having this problem at work lately. Teammates will be asked to implement a new module for <new data integration> into the codebase, and they'll just point Claude at it and say "integrate <new thing> into this codebase" in one shot and what it will do is create a function for function clone of the first data integration's client, down to implementing copies of the private utility methods.

summarybot 3mo ago

What's the cost/benefit analysis on Papermark being open-source?

mmonaghan 3mo ago

ehhhh I'm not a corgi stan but I'd bet they just took the design & copy, which is totally fine imo. Often better to just take another's design instead of spend a bunch of cycles figuring out flow. This is doubly true for secondary pages/layouts/features. If I were them, I'd have changed copy and probably done some internal testing to smooth rough edges/improve where needed but sounds like they're moving as quickly as possible. If they did just copy paste code, straight to jail...

nlitened 3mo ago
Design (output of designers) and copy (output of copywriters) are subject to the same copyright law as code (output of programmers). Programmers are not the only people whose intellectual property is protected.
- probabletrain 3mo ago
  I'd be very surprised if the very-similar-looking design of corgi's product breaches any copyright law, copyright of design or layout is much more finicky than copyright of code. This seems like more of a moral issue than a legal one.

renoir 3mo ago

[flagged]

stronglikedan 3mo ago
that's quite the stretch

tsunamifury 3mo ago

With LLMs being able to replicate simple SaaS tools we are going to see a lot of "you stole my idea" and regardless of it being right or wrong, the judgement of time tends to be defensibility. I wouldn't bet on small scale software defensibility in the future. Just being practical...

tsunamifury 3mo ago

Customer aquisitions and retention has always been the moat over code. As much as this forum might have a hard time accepting that

arlattimore 3mo ago

Yuck, a little vomit just came up :(

euio757 3mo ago

> Sorry for the delayed response to this, I just woke up Posted 7:52 am https://x.com/i/status/2070158170937581951 https://x.com/i/status/2070158170937581951 Ahhh, that explains now why working 7 days a week is necessary for this Manhattan-project-level startup, he's not ‘Grindmaxxing’ by waking up with the 5 AM club every day! (Context for folks not terminally online: https://x.com/i/status/2061139112426623054 https://x.com/i/status/2061139112426623054)

kshacker 3mo ago

There appears to have been a cease and desist issued by Corgi to Papermark: https://x.com/danielmerja/status/2070264877017350492?s=46 https://x.com/danielmerja/status/2070264877017350492?s=46 They want the tweet alleging copy to be deleted.

manwithopinions 3mo ago
Peter is currently threatening me with a defamation suit, he seems to be quite the litigious man. My defamation suit is because I wrote a post summarizing my comments from this thread about Corgi: https://reticulating.substack.com/p/ycombinators-corgi-insurance-a-26 https://reticulating.substack.com/p/ycombinators-corgi-insur... I guess when you're working 7 days a week you've gotta find something to fill the time with.
- rwarren63 3mo ago
  who is peter? why did they send you a cease and desist?
  - manwithopinions 3mo ago
    Peter Skaliy, Head of Legal at Corgi, same person who sent the cease and desist to people on Twitter, is filing a suit against me for defamation because of that Substack post. "Corgi builds insurance structures that allow us to best serve the needs of our customers. For technology companies, operating a technology liability line through a Risk Retention Group is not unusual, improper, or exotic; it is a standard insurance structure for specialty liability risks where similarly situated businesses benefit from tailored underwriting, specialized coverage, and risk alignment. The suggestion that Corgi customers are unknowingly taking on “balance sheet risk,” member-assessment risk, or responsibility for unrelated insureds’ liabilities is false. Your draft’s statement that “Corgi will help you share that risk,” combined with the question whether customers understand the risk of other companies in the group, does not merely describe RRGs in the abstract. It falsely implies that Corgi leaves customers exposed to open ended financial liability for other insureds. That implication is defamatory and false. RRGs are regulated insurance carriers subject to financial, reserve, governance, and regulatory requirements. They are not informal risk sharing clubs where policyholders unknowingly become responsible for each other’s balance sheets. The RRG structure unique to Corgi. Major insurance groups use different insurer structures for different classes of risk because different risks are best served by different structures. Berkshire Hathaway, which the draft itself invokes, has affiliated insurance operations involving Risk Retention Groups in specialty liability markets, including medical and legal professional liability. That underscores the point: RRGs are a widely recognized insurance structure for specialty liability lines, and allow insurers to provide more tailored coverage options rather than issuing a generic policy. The draft’s statement that Corgi “innovated with AI in a regulated industry by cutting corners” is also false and defamatory. Corgi raised millions pre-revenue and spent nearly two years building and obtaining regulatory approvals for its insurance operations, including approvals and requirements relating to reserves, pricing, liquidity, governance, and compliance. That is the opposite of “cutting corners.” Any allegation that Corgi used AI to evade regulatory approval, underwriting standards, reserve requirements, pricing controls, liquidity controls, or other compliance obligations is false. Any article suggesting otherwise, including by implying that Corgi misleads customers, conceals the RRG structure, exposes policyholders to undisclosed balance-sheet risk, or uses RRGs and AI to evade proper underwriting or regulatory obligations, is false and highly damaging. To be clear, if you publish these false statements or defamatory implications, Corgi will sue you personally and will pursue all available claims and remedies against you and any other responsible parties. Corgi has enforced its rights before and will do so again. You should not mistake this for an abstract legal reservation."

retornam 3mo ago

I used to have a lot of respect for YC and the kind of founders it used to attract. However, over the past few years, they have started attracting a certain type of founder that most people wouldn’t associate with. The decline in the quality of YC's founder pool and founder reputation is tarnishing its brand, but I doubt anyone there realizes it, or is willing to publicly admit it. It’s egregious that a portfolio company passed off clear AGPL code as its own and doubled down on defending their actions when there was clear evidence showing that they had indeed copied the code. Any well-meaning person should call this out, including anyone who cares deeply about YC and its reputation. If a founder is willing to lie about something like this, imagine the other things he would lie about?

ValentineC 3mo ago
> However, over the past few years, they have started attracting a certain type of founder that most people wouldn’t associate with. I don't follow YC acceptance enough to be able to see a trend, but there's one founder in one of 2025's batches that I feel the same way about: dodgy, questionable sense of ethics, never stops to consider whether they're in the wrong or how their actions may affect others detrimentally. Then again, that could be a trait of a potentially successful founder. Or a psychopath.
deleted 3mo ago
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oscgam1 3mo ago

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zftnb666 3mo ago

"Vibe coded" is the new "I built this from scratch" except with more git blame

deleted 3mo ago

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fadenjfbc 3mo ago

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