Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#61

Post by faizshah »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #48
egypturnash wrote: post #42

"Now software developers are feeling what authors and artist felt". As an artist who got repeatedly told to stop making buggy whips and get into the absolutely tedious-sounding new field of "writing prompts" every time I expressed dismay and displeasure about image generation around here, every story about this sort of thing here is the sweetest schadenfreude I have tasted in my life. Especially when the general feel…

I can’t imagine software engineers caring about this at all. The only people that care about UI theft are C suite IP clutchers. SWEs generally love being able to use each other’s work. Copying UI by eye has been SOP since the dawn of computing.

As someone who has used multiple vibe coded internal tools: you will care when you use these tools and encounter strange bugs and missing features.

The human touch is visible in the way your features work just like in vibe coded art and games it lacks intention.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#66

Post by dlcarrier »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #46
dlcarrier wrote: post #16

Copyright doesn't cover instructions like recipes, protocols, or APIs; those require patents. Not looking at the source code has been used to make nuisance copyright lawsuits less likely (e.g. Phoenix and AMI implementations of IBM's BIOS) but it's still easy to prevail when a new work is created by rewriting some else's source code. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.... .) Neither copyrig…

> Neither copyright nor patent cover a user interface *us only > You automatically get copyright protection when you create: ... original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases https://www.gov.uk/copyright > Registered designs provide protection for the visual appearance of a product. In the context of GUIs, this means that the unique visual elements of your digital interfaces (i.e. th…

It looks like a registered design is similar to a design patent in the US. The automatic copyright is the same in the US as the UK, probably due to the Berne Convention.

Apple did file a claim against Samsung for multiple design patent infringements, including a design patent for using a grid of icons with rounded corners, but the US Supreme Court ruled that Apple would have to show financial loss from the infringement, which basically gives it no more power than a trademark. That was after a jury trial that heavily favored Apple, so it's not likely that anyone will ever get anything meaningful out of trying to enforce a design patent on a user interface alone.

Has anything like Apple's lawsuits against Microsoft or Samsung happened in the UK? Outside of purposeful counterfeiting, case law over trademark and design patent clams seems to be pretty weak. Then again, copyright is only powerful because of centuries of case law expanding its reach, and as written probably shouldn't cover fan fiction, shared universes, or possibly even translations. Intellectual property in general seems to be more about common law than the actual statues creating it.

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#68

Post by sowbug »

gnerd00 wrote: post #34
arjie wrote: post #28

The Corgi event doesn't seem particularly notable. There are similar features implemented in the most bog standard way that those features can be implemented using the pattern that AFAIK Github pioneered with a 'Danger Zone'. Both parties are using the same upstream components so it ends up looking the same. I don't know when the extreme intellectual property viewpoint entered software engineering as a mainstream opi…

> I don't know it is abundantly clear from the post, agree > Bill Gates MSFT declared open source a "cancer" and "a threat to American Values" .. later, almost the entire Internet is run fundamentally on OSS. What motivations might MSFT have had in 1998 ? Are there clear lessons from the extremes of the past that could be applied now? Do authors have a right to LICENSE software they write? which ones, only Linus or D…

I assume this is the Bill Gates reference:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobb...

Re: Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

#70

Post by dataviz1000 »

echoangle wrote: post #23
dataviz1000 wrote: post #22

Did you agree to terms of use? Did you have to click a check box that you agree to terms of use before seeing or having access to the items you copied? Click wrap. If in the contract that you agreed to there is language that you agreed to not copy the work, then you likely are in breach of contract. If it is publicly available knowledge probably not breach of contract. I’m not a lawyer of course.

Copyright applies even without the contract.

There is a lot of copying that isn't protected by copyright. It is possible to include what can't be copied that might not fall under copyright in the terms of service contract. Many people not being able to use copyright to prevent copying instead successfully sued based on breach of contract.

Companies should understand that they can protect their IP this way.

Post reply on HN