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Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

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Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#131

Post by Blammar »

tremere wrote: post #129
crazygringo wrote: post #122

I seriously do not understand why any employee would steal their previous employers' code to use at a new employer. There's little-to-no personal upside, and only horrible downside if you get caught. I mean, this guy: > Moniruzzaman allegedly gave his personal email unauthorized access to Valeo's systems to steal "tens of thousands of files" and 6GB of source code shortly after that development... Valeo said its form…

There is tremendous upside. You can look like a rockstar at the new company and propel yourself upwards with that momentum.

More like a shooting star once your perfidy is discovered.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#132

Post by justinclift »

Symmetry wrote: post #21

One of the generally accepted reasons why its hard to get graphics companies to open source their drives has always been that everybody is violating everybody else's patents. And while everybody knows this making it too obvious is a legal disadvantage. But I hadn't expected it was also true of copyright.

For Nvidia, the most likely reason they've strongly avoided Open Sourcing their drivers isn't anything like that.

It's simply a function of their history. They used to have professional level graphics cards ("Nvidia Quadro") using exactly the same chips as their consumer graphics cards.

The BIOS of the cards was different, enabling different features. So people wanting those features cheaply would buy the consumer graphics cards and flash the matching Quadro BIOS to them. Worked perfectly fine.

Nvidia naturally wasn't happy about those "lost sales", so began a game of whack-a-mole to stop BIOS flashing from working. They did stuff like adding resistors to the boards to tell the card whether it was a Geforce or Quadro card, and when that was promptly reverse engineered they started getting creative in other ways.

Meanwhile, they couldn't really Open Source their drivers because then people could see what the "Geforce vs Quadro" software checks were. That would open up software countermeasures being developed.

---

In the most recent few years the professional cards and gaming cards now use different chips. So the BIOS tricks are no longer relevant.

Which means Nvidia can "safely" Open Source their drivers now, and they've begun doing so.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#133

Post by mangamadaiyan »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28
takinola wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have direct knowledge of this company or the parties involved but I would be highly doubtful that Nvidia would want to have an employee steal the secrets of a competitor/partner. In my experience, companies of this size would aggressively not want tainted IP inside their companies. He would need to be bringing across something as valuable as AGI, cure for cancer, etc for it to be even worth considering. There…

The company I worked for, was paranoid as hell about IP in the code. They hired some source scanning firm, for a lot of money, to continually scan our codebase. They were mostly looking for GPL ( nasty, naasssssty GPL! ) code, but they also scanned for code that couldn't be accounted for in our "clean" repos. Not exactly sure how that worked (or even, if it worked at all. I think they brought smoke[0]). [0] https://w…

Funny, I too worked for a company that did exactly this. The scanner was called "Black Duck" or some such.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#134

Post by TeMPOraL »

Blammar wrote: post #131
tremere wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tremendous upside. You can look like a rockstar at the new company and propel yourself upwards with that momentum.

More like a shooting star once your perfidy is discovered.

As with any other crime, the trick is to not get caught!

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#135

Post by anon373839 »

objclxt wrote: post #91
anon373839 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure we’ll all be glad one day that Apple shared this research breakthrough: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/6/16614038/apple-samsung-sl...

You realize the patent you’re referring to was a design patent, not a utility patent? They are very different, the former only covers look and feel, not method.

I wasn’t aware of that. But it’s even more baffling: how did they qualify for a patent on the design of a basic sliding latch?

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#136

Post by missedthecue »

crazygringo wrote: post #122

I seriously do not understand why any employee would steal their previous employers' code to use at a new employer. There's little-to-no personal upside, and only horrible downside if you get caught. I mean, this guy: > Moniruzzaman allegedly gave his personal email unauthorized access to Valeo's systems to steal "tens of thousands of files" and 6GB of source code shortly after that development... Valeo said its form…

You can be lazy and get lots of promotions and bonuses. That's why. People risk major felonies to steal $5k from a bank. Getting fired on the (let's be real) low risk you get caught is nothing

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#137

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

dctoedt wrote: post #79
throwaway54_56 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Violating patents is one thing, as you're only violating the concept/idea, but the implementation is still up to you The concept/idea is not what is patented. The patent is (or should be) for the specific execution of the idea. Competitors are free to implement their feature using methods other that what is covered by the patent, even if the end result gives the exact same functionality.

> The concept/idea is not what is patented. The patent is (or should be) for the specific execution of the idea. Competitors are free to implement their feature using methods other that what is covered by the patent, even if the end result gives the exact same functionality. IP lawyer here (EDIT: not yours, of course): That's a considerable (and potentially-dangerous) oversimplification. What matters is whether what…

Question, in this case, is it a violation of patents + trade secrets, or just the patents?

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#138

Post by chii »

justinclift wrote: post #132
Symmetry wrote: post #21

One of the generally accepted reasons why its hard to get graphics companies to open source their drives has always been that everybody is violating everybody else's patents. And while everybody knows this making it too obvious is a legal disadvantage. But I hadn't expected it was also true of copyright.

For Nvidia, the most likely reason they've strongly avoided Open Sourcing their drivers isn't anything like that. It's simply a function of their history. They used to have professional level graphics cards ("Nvidia Quadro") using exactly the same chips as their consumer graphics cards. The BIOS of the cards was different, enabling different features. So people wanting those features cheaply would buy the consumer gr…

Customers really, really hate segmentation of product [1], esp. if the product end up being exactly the same!

I think companies should stop trying to segment customers. It's a long term loss, despite a short term gain.

[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#139

Post by happytiger »

Tertiary point but one that been on my mind…

What’s the difference between one person doing it individually and a company doing it to train an AI? I mean isn’t this exactly what a lot of LLm training data is built on as well?

I get there might be different legalities, but morally isn’t it all basically merely degrees of theft? Like this is trade secret theft, but training an AI on the code isn’t?

You can download a car…

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#140

Post by chii »

sokoloff wrote: post #59
ip26 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given independent invention is apparently not a defense against infringement, that makes a lot of sense. I can’t even imagine trying to screen the codebase for that.

"Infringement" is not specific enough there. Independent invention is not a defense against patent infringement, but is a defense against copyright infringement.

It's not easy to prove independent invention as a defense, because you have to have set it up to do so in the first place, not after the fact.
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