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Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

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Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#152

Post by davorak »

ffsm8 wrote: post #64
davorak wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings. I am not a lawyer, regardless of the list of examples below(I have been told examples in contracts and TOS are a mixed bag for enforceability), this text says that if anthropic decides to make a product like yours you have to stop using Claude for that product. That is a pretty p…

It may or may not be enforceable in the court of law, but they'll definitely ban you if they notice you... And I'm pretty sure ban evasion can become an issue in the court of law, even if the original TOS may not hold up

The part I quoted:

> This restriction is specifically about competitive use - you cannot use Claude to build products that compete with Anthropic's offerings.

Is more strict than the examples. The examples are what I think may not be enforceable.

So for example:

> What is NOT prohibited: > - General ML/AI development for your own applications (computer vision, recommendation systems, fraud detection, etc.) > - Using Claude as a coding assistant for ML projects

If you use Claude for "General ML/AI development for your own applications..." and Anthropic puts out a specific product for "General ML/AI development for your own applications..." you probably can not use Claude for "General ML/AI development for your own applications..." and have to use the new specific product instead. Well as long as the example is not enforceable.

The first quote looks enforceable and if I want to be on the same side I have to assume it takes precedence over the example.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#154

Post by ankit219 »

afdbcreid wrote: post #147
ankit219 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because your subscription depends on the very API business. Anthropic's cogs is rent of buying x amount of h100s. cost of a marginal query for them is almost zero until the batch fills up and they need a new cluster. So, API clusters are usually built for peak load with low utilization (filled batch) at any given time. Given AI's peak demand is extremely spiky they end up with low utilization numbers for API support.…

If Anthropic can't use a really simple API separation and rate-limit only one it's really on them.

They can, but then cost per subscription would not be that low.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#155

Post by hobofan »

behnamoh wrote: post #80
VoxPelli wrote: post #38

Sounds like standard terms from lawyers – not very friendly to customers, very friendly to company – but is it particularly bad here? I remember when I was part of procuring an analytics tool for a previous employer and they had a similar clause that would essentially have banned us from building any in-house analytics while we were bound by that contract. We didn't sign.

> Sounds like standard terms from lawyers If they were "standard" terms, then how come no other AI provider imposes them?

Because they approach creating such terms in a different way? e.g. some competitors may consider the chances of it to be enforceable to be 0 and not bother with it at all, while others just didn't bother tweaking the standard boilerplate they got from their lawyers unless needed.

Literally the first 4 SaaS companies that came to my mind to check (Atlassian/Jira, Linear, Pipedrive, Stackblitz/Bolt.new) have a similar clause in their TOS.

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#158

Post by dathinab »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #129
dathinab wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or you just do it and be in the EU it's a clear anti-competive clause by a dominant market leader, such clauses tend to be void AFIK

What do you mean by void? Sure you cannot be sued for writing clone, in any country. All they can do is ban account and I think they can ban any account in EU.

void means it's not legal and it's more or less as if the text there where just void/blank

you can't violate a void clause in TOS or a contract

so you can't get a ban/termination for violating a void clause

they still can decide to not do business with you, after providing all service you already payed for

and that is _if_ you can decide to not to business with individuals without providing a reason, in certain situations companies can't do so (mainly related to unfair competition, market power abuse etc.). And this is the point where my knowledge details get to thin to really if/when/how this could or could not apply here.

> Sure you cannot be sued for writing clone, in any country.

in countries where such a clause is valid/not-void, you very well can be sued for using Claude Code to work on/develop e.g. Open Code...

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#159

Post by viraptor »

lobito25 wrote: post #157

Claude code quality degradation is currently the worst I've ever seen.

This idea comes around every few months, but nobody can document it in tests (apart from the actually broken services that get fixed in a couple of days). Have you got repeatable cases where it can be shown?

Re: Anthropic: Developing a Claude Code competitor using Claude Code is banned

#160

Post by viraptor »

pjmlp wrote: post #156

I still remember the backslash Borland got when they had the clever idea to forbid writing compilers with Borland C++, and naturally had to rollback from. Some people never learn from history, it seems.

"no, it never works for those people... But it may work for us!"
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