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My former employer Opera Software has filed a lawsuit against me
- louthy 13y agoFor somebody who doesn't want to talk about the case, he sure does talk about the case an awful lot!
- hkmurakami 13y agoMight be because there's definitely an element of "the court of public opinion" for these two consumer product companies (and given Opera's stance, OP must feel some sense of loyalty/responsibility to defending Mozilla's name and public image) edit: Correction by magclock. Mozilla (so far) isn't directly involved in the suit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629534
- louthy 13y agoQuite, but one of the reasons for not talking about a case is to not give the opposition any ammunition. It's best to just keep quiet until the case is over. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
- hkmurakami 13y agoRight; it's definitely a fine line to walk. I'm not sure what is the 'correct' strategy either; we'll have to wait and see.
- louthy 13y agoI think this is probably the best advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5629446
- magclock 13y agoOne consumer product company and one one-man consulting company. Mozilla is not a part of this, according to the articles.
- hkmurakami 13y agoThanks for the correction; I've added the fix to my parent comment :)
- DannyBee 13y agoTo the last point: Mozilla not being involved directly in public is not surprising (unless you hold Mozilla to a higher standard, which some folks do). It's pretty typical that what happens is the corporation gives some initial advice, and tries to find you good counsel. They basically have to get out, because the corporate employment lawyer does not work for the employee, and there is usually a clear conflict of interest between representing both employee and corporation interests at the same time. Since Mozilla was not sued here, Mozilla may pay for his defense (depending on factors), but direct intervention usually does not happen. The rest goes to your "public opinion" element. Mozilla may publicly support him, of course, but in most cases, associating yourself with a lawsuit is often lose lose, even in cases where it appears to be defending a good guy (Imagine if today they support him, and tomorrow it turns out he was lying). They may just be hoping their name doesn't get dragged through the mud here. I haven't seen any public release from Opera accusing Mozilla of bad behavior, but if Mozilla comes out and says something very supportive, Opera may just do that. My guess is staying out of it publicly seems the best way to accomplish that.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- suyash 13y agoExactly, and there might be arguments that he has made on this blog that might be used against him in the court of law. He may not have realized that, that is why they always recommend to shut up and let the lawyers talk when a case like this is going on.
- ww520 13y agoI don't know the merit of the suit and from the sound of it I don't like their trade secret suit. With that said, I think it's a very good strategy for Trond to go public with this. He is one person and the other party is a corporation. It will be a lopsided fight in the court. Even if he would win in court, it will have cost him dearly. This is what these kinds of suit about - intimidation. But by going public, he will be able to get public support and Opera is risking eroding their brand and good will. At the end of the day, a cold calculation on Opera's part to see how much branding they are losing due to the suit will convince them to drop it.
- jamesaguilar 13y agoI hope he has checked this with a lawyer and that he is not giving his adversary ammunition. Good luck.
- hkmurakami 13y agoI am honestly surprised that Mozilla's legal counsel has not stepped in already to offer advice and guidance. (this post is something that such an intervention most likely would have stopped)
- nawitus 13y agoNote that it's a court in Norway, not USA, which makes a rather large difference.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoWhat are some of the key differences?
- jonknee 13y agoFor starters, Mozilla's lawyer has nothing to offer.
- MichaelApproved 13y agoWouldn't they have lawyers (plural)? I'd guess they also have access to lawyers who know the laws in other countries.
- jonknee 13y agoMaybe they have a lawyer on retainer in Norway, but I doubt it. I'm sure they'll get one, but it would be strange for a non-profit like Mozilla to have a worldwide legal staff.
- cmstoken 13y agoIANAL: So here's my advice: Get a lawyer.
- malgorithms 13y agoI wish I knew someone who used Opera so I could ask them to start boycotting it.
- suyash 13y agoYou can still do it, translate this blog post in Chinese and post it on Weibo. Opera Mobile is big in asia.
- w1ntermute 13y agoOr translate it into Russian. A lot of former Soviet bloc countries have high usage of Opera.
- stalled 13y agoA couple of years too late for Russian boycotts, Opera already got itself the most rapidly decreasing market share: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201103-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-RU-monthly-201103-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-201103-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-201103-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201103-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BY-monthly-201103-201303
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoReally? This is quite news to me; I don't think many people are still stuck with feature phones on China Mobile, at least in the big cities.
- hkmurakami 13y agoIIRC the low-end smartphones made by ZTE/Huawei are quite popular.
- seanmcdirmid 13y agoYes, but are they running opera mobile? My understanding was that it lost popularity when the government stopped allowing people to use it to jump the GFW.
- suyash 13y agoIt's ironic that both the companies which are proponet of non-profit open source software are engaged in this battle. Opera's legal counsel need to reassess this case, I don't think they can get $3.4million from this guy, what is the point of going after him?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- hkmurakami 13y agoI'm just hoping that the suit doesn't extend its tentacles to either Mozilla's product(s) or its finances.
- TheCoelacanth 13y agoAFAIK, Opera is in no way a proponent of non-profit or open source software. They are a publicly traded for-profit company and their main product is proprietary.
- suyash 13y agoOk, thanks for the correction.
- andreastt 13y agoExcept that Opera has historically been one of the most significant proponents for open standards, the WHATWG, and opening the web to people without internet access. One should also not forget that Opera is now contributing, and have already landed several patches, to the Chromium and Blink projects.
- mpyne 13y agoYes, but that's certainly a great position to take for a small for-profit selling a proprietary product designed to interpret content primarily written for other software. Corel probably would have been thrilled to have Adobe make their formats completely open and "standardized" back in the day to reduce the friction of switching products.
- hkmurakami 13y agoFor Mozilla itself, other than possibly being painted in a somewhat negative light, do they have any chance of becoming the "co-defendant" in this suit? (They'll surely be called as a witness)
- magclock 13y agoI think he meant to write "My company's former customer".
- suyash 13y agoThat makes a big difference, he can be prevented from personal liability in that case and can declare bankruptcy.
- gcp 13y agoDepends on a lot of things, really, like his company's structure and the relevant laws.
- eliasmacpherson 13y agoI hadn't thought of that. Not only do Opera's direct employees need to watch their steps - but contractors too. It's almost as if they want people to go in, collect their paychecks and offer up nothing above average.
- Androidmeda 13y agoDo Opera employees have to watch their steps to a greater degree than employees in other companies? I think that if you stole trade secrets from any other company and sold them to a competitor, they would sue you as well. All you need to do to avoid being sued is to not sell trade secrets to competitors.
- eliasmacpherson 13y agoWell we'll see the outcome of this case, you can be sued if you didn't which may be the case here. I haven't heard of a software dev being sued like this before, so I would say Opera employees do have to watch their steps to a greater agree, given there's precedent.
- gwgarry 13y agoincredibly lame thing to do to former employees. if you can't innovate, sue!
- magclock 13y agoThe thing they can't agree about did not happen while this guy was an employee of Opera Software. He was offering his consulting services as a commercial company.
- mrtron 13y agoThis is probably a terrible idea to publish!
- wesray 13y agoOpera, you are dead to me.
- sigzero 13y agoYes, because what he wrote is the absolute truth? We have no idea if that is the case.
- wpietri 13y agoWell, we know that the suit exists: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/29/opera-claims-former-employee-gave-away-trade-secrets-to-mozilla-sues-him-for-3-4m/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/29/opera-claims-former... And really, that's all that he says in that note.
- mcherm 13y agoUm... no, he also says that he didn't do it.
- magclock 13y agoI think the site you were trying to open in your organic browser is called reddit.com, Sir. This way...
- baby 13y agoPeople are quickly jumping to conclusions here.
- crummy 13y agoNow let's hear Opera's side of the story.
- baby 13y agoThis is the wisest thing to do. We have no idea what's really happening and this blog post doesn't really tell much (and it shouldn't if he doesn't want to give too much information to his now enemies' layers).
- jussij 13y agoOr better still, let the court hear both sides of the story and let them decide.
- wpietri 13y agoTheir lawyer's (content-free) statement is in this article: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/29/opera-claims-former-employee-gave-away-trade-secrets-to-mozilla-sues-him-for-3-4m/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/29/opera-claims-former...
- nick2021 13y agoSo let me get this straight, Opera is suing you because they think you gave away secrets. It appears they have no hard evidence, no emails, no phone conversations, just someone talking about ideas. I would personally laugh at them and think about all of the money I would get when they lose. Also Opera needs your millions so that they can continue to support a piece of software that no one uses. (Chrome FTW!)
- Ixiaus 13y agoThat is a myopic statement. Get off the bro-horse for a second. Opera has a lot of users! Their software, while not oss is pretty damn good! Whether Opera is being evil or not we don't know and can't know from one filed lawsuits, speculation, and public retort so stop jumping on the bandwagon.
- papaver 13y agopretty sad to here this from opera. i've been an avid opera user for the last 10 years. i haven't seen as much innovation in any other browser like ive seen in opera. from mouse gestures to tab grouping to the closed tabs list to a million other features that were first in opera and slowly migrated to all the other browsers. sure websites sometimes didn't render properly and no one ever cared to properly support it, but still they were always on the cutting edge feature wise. although this doesn't change my stance on using opera, i hope this results in a ousting of the current ceo.
- Androidmeda 13y agoWhy would the current CEO be ousted? Why are you mad at him instead of the guy who allegedly stole Opera's business secret and sold them to a competitor?
- dobbsbob 13y agoYou and the guys who work at Xenforo can have a my old employer is suing me party. Curious, what idiot in management at Opera decided to MITM attack https traffic on mobile platform for "optimizations"?
- dsl 13y agoOpera Mini can't render HTML (only OPML), so they have to make the SSL connection on your behalf from the server. This isn't exactly a MITM attack, and from what I remember last time I played with it, they even warn you of the implications the first time you try to view secure content. Opera Mobile and Desktop never mess with SSL, period.
- fern 13y agoAs far as I know, the one making the accusations has to present proof. Am I wrong? Is it so simple that saying "Oh, by the way, I believe he stole my idea." is enough to sue someone? No one would (Or "should" maybe) be so stupid as to go for that.
- wpietri 13y agoThat is enough to sue someone. It's not enough to win, but it's definitely enough to sue. There's some logic behind that. To prove claims like that, you may need the power of the court to get documents or witness statements under oath. The process is know as discovery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_%28law%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_%28law%29 Unfortunately, it also means that the party being sued has to suddenly put up a bunch of cash to pay to defend the lawsuit. In situations where one side has a lot more money than the other, like when a corporation sues an individual, that can be ruinous. So it can be an effective method of bullying somebody.
- claudius 13y ago> Unfortunately, it also means that the party being sued has to suddenly put up a bunch of cash to pay to defend the lawsuit. In any decent legal system, you can get publicly funded lawyers if you are unable to pay for your own, and if you win, you get your costs back anyways.
- wpietri 13y agoFor civil suits? Really? Which ones do that?
- msandford 13y agoNope, that's not how it works. You simply have to ALLEGE that the other party did something wrong via a lawsuit and then it's up to the courts to sort it out. Intimidation lawsuits are easy to make happen as the cost of prosecution for a large company is small, where as the cost of defense for an individual is large. So all that has to happen is the big company makes legal arguments that will take the judge some time to catch on to and BLAM you've bankrupted (or worse) the defendant. Once he has no money, he's forced to settle. Intimidation lawsuit success!
- nly 13y agoI find it interesting that Opera are trying to claw back revenue on old innovations while seemingly stagnating. The rendering engine they're dumping in favour of WebKit is fast and slick. The number of new user visible features and the rate of releases has seemed sluggish to me for what must be 4 or 5 years.
- purple_platypus 13y agoThat's part of why they're dropping Presto for Blink, I think. One of the blogs I read on it mentioned that a lot of time and money was going into keeping Presto up to date with what developers were doing (such as ignoring anything not webkit on mobile). Switching to Blink will give them more resources to pump into UX.
- Androidmeda 13y agoWhat old innovations are they trying to claw back revenue from? Wasn't the disputed object actually a fairly new innovation?
- yekko 13y agoTime to uninstall Opera from my computer.
- dkrich 13y agoI'll admit that I am no IP expert but I'm told that winning an IP suit is impossibly difficult and extremely expensive. To pursue it, you really better believe that you have a tremendous amount of upside (ie, deep pockets on the other side) and that you have a very strong case. You might say that they are "just suing for $3.4 million" and that they might settle out of court, but I'd bet that unless Opera has a really strong in-house counsel in this area, this whole story will evaporate pretty soon. Usually things like this start out because one party is pissed-off and then once cooler heads prevail they realize it's just not worth it and move on. Not sure what the laws are or where Opera is headquartered, though so IP laws may be vastly different.
- zurn 13y agoNorway, and how different depends on what you're comparing with. Probably not too expensive for his means.
- devcpp 13y agoThey probably just want to tell their employees that sharing "trade secrets" won't be tolerated. Nothing better for that than a lawsuit with ridiculous amounts of money. It might fail but it sends a strong message. Not that I don't despise this kind of practices...
- sleepyhead 13y agoActually $3.4m is not that little in Norwegian court. Amounts paid out from lawsuits are a lot less compared to what is normal in the states. Also the judges here have very little knowledge about IT so I agree that winning the case will be difficult for Opera. My previous company had a lawsuit against a competitor and lost largely due to the judge having no knowledge of IT.
- Androidmeda 13y agoI don't think this is a regular IP suit. It's more like a breach of contract or something. Opera likely hadn't legally protected the features/designs that were stolen, which would be why the theft would be such a bad thing for them. It's been a year since the video that triggered the lawsuit was published. I doubt that someone at Opera has been pissed off for a year and done this without thinking through it at all.
- lesbaker 13y agoHonest question: How would Opera Software prove in court that Trond Hansen stole browser ideas/feature concepts (if I'm reading it correctly)? Subpoena Mozilla's emails? My gut says if this goes to court it will devolve into "he said/she said".
- Androidmeda 13y agoIt seems pretty straightforward. Trond Hansen was apparently paid to do some consultancy design work for Opera. After accepting his paycheck and moving on, he decided to take the design(s) he made while at Opera, and give it to Mozilla. This doesn't sound like a very clever thing to do. It sounds very illegal indeed.
- eliasmacpherson 13y agoDepends on the contract he signed, and where he signed it. For example, some contracts stipulate all work inside and outside of work hours belongs to the employer, most others don't.
- tipiirai 13y agoFuck Opera. Their software sucks. Now even more.
- Tomis02 13y agoActually Opera's software the one that sucks the least in the browser market. Sorry.
- smiddereens 13y agoI've tried to get into Opera every year for over the past decade. While I admit that they introduced many innovative features, they could never get them "right" and their UI was always ugly and unpleasant to work with. If anything Opera should be suing this guy for that.
- Tomis02 13y agoWhat of the UI? It's the most customizable UI in a browser. You have skins, themes, any element can be placed anywhere/hidden. What's the problem?
- stormen 13y agoIn Norway, it's usual for employees to sign intellectual copyright waivers for all work done for their employers. If Trond developed parts of the CB browser and/or other intellectual property whilst working for Opera (during office hours), they could easily claim - and probably win - a case that parts and/or all of the CB browser rightfully belonged to Opera Software. I haven't read their lawsuit, I'm just saying that the case might be more complicated that one person's blog post. There was an (in parts) similar case to this one in Norway about Nettby.no, the so-called "Fredrik Kristiansen vs Dagbladet" (Google it if you're interested).
- Deestan 13y ago> In Norway, it's usual for employees to sign intellectual copyright waivers for all work done for their employers. Yes, but that does not seem to be what this is about. On the surface it seems he was re-using good ideas rather than copying over actual work. The nettby case was about outright copying source code.
- Androidmeda 13y agoRe-using ideas/features he was paid for at Opera? Doesn't that make those Opera's property?
- eliasmacpherson 13y agoOnly if the contract signed says so. There's usually a standard section in the contract for this sort of thing so it really depends on that.
- julianz 13y agoRegardless of the facts in this case, this screams to me that Opera is fucked, they know it, and will grab anything they can on the way down. What other conclusion could you possibly draw?
- probably_wrong 13y ago> What other conclusion could you possibly draw? Without facts? None. But if you want some speculation: Opera's interface is consistently listed as one of the preferred features for its users (if not the preferred feature). And now a guy just gives away for free what would have been their most valuable asset (assuming they were on the right, but again, apparently we don't like facts). They would be pretty incompetent at their job if they didn't sue the guy.
- Androidmeda 13y agoIt just so happens that Opera announced the financial results for the 1st quarter today: http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=326699 http://www.newsweb.no/newsweb/search.do?messageId=326699 At the same time, they published a report on usage of their mobile browsers: http://business.opera.com/smw/2013/03/ http://business.opera.com/smw/2013/03/ Record profits and revenues, and 20 million new users from February to March. Doesn't exactly look like a company in trouble to me. But maybe you know something I don't.
- atc 13y agoWow, what a waste of time reading that was.
- atc 13y agoWow, what a waste of time reading that was.
- fmax30 13y agoI am pretty sure that the negative PR that this lawsuit will bring more damaging to Opera than any trade secrets.
- Tomis02 13y agoProbably that was the intention.
- iagomr 13y agoYou so naughty
- tpainton 13y agoI would say the absolute worst thing he could have done was write this article. I'm sure his attorney will agree.
- kriro 13y agoDo providers of other browsers that use tabs have some sort of licensing deal with Opera? Seems like they are suing over trade secrets based on Firefox tabs? Why are they suing the guy and not Mozilla, why are there no lawsuits against other companies that provide browsers? Feels like a FU-cause-we-can type of deal.
- sleepyhead 13y agoIt is not based on normal tabs (which Opera was first to introduce to a browser). Well actually we don't know the specific yet but the blog post says "a Mozilla employee presents among others a feature named Search Tabs".
- Androidmeda 13y ago> Why are they suing the guy and not Mozilla, why are there no lawsuits against other companies that provide browsers? Probably because this isn't about features that already exist, but about features that Opera was working on and hadn't even made public yet. And this guy sold them to Mozilla or something. Opera never had problems with other browsers copying them once the features were actually out, but in this case Opera's secret features were sold to Mozilla before Opera even had a version of their own.
- ttrreeww 13y agoI'm also leaving Opera for good now.
- drderidder 13y agoBoycottOpera.JS :-) <script type="text/javascript"> if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Opera') !== -1) { alert("Hello Opera User! I encourage you to uninstall Opera and use Mozilla Firefox instead. Click OK to learn why."); document.location = "http://trondblog.tumblr.com/post/49192504201/so-my-former-employer-opera-software-has-filed-a" } </script>
- stretchwithme 13y agoJust because something is a trade secret doesn't mean someone else can't think of it. That's the risk you run when you don't patent an idea.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- a-non-ymouse 13y agoOpera employee here. Anon for obvious reasons XD Didn't work there when Trond did so I can't speak to his moral standing, but there's been talk around the water cooler about the lawsuit. Several people who worked with Trond in 2009-2010 (and even before 2006) are still here and the impression I'm getting is that they're annoyed with Trond for taking all the credit for the work and ignoring all the work they put into the stuff he later handed to Mozilla. He pretends to be the lone innovator but the truth is he got plenty of help. He took a healthy paycheck from Opera and then turned around and handed the results over to Mozilla. My 2¢: He's going to lose the lawsuit.