Not condoning MS, but does anyone else find it ironic that a chinese company is accusing MS of piracy?
Plurk is Canadian, not Chinese.
Microsoft rips off Plurk
101–110 of 141 posts
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#102Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources. I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, w…
You are clearly in the right. But a bit of advice: skip the whole look and feel issue* and stick to copyright infringement. Their code is exactly the same or highly derivative of Plurk code. This is pretty well-worn copyright territory, I don't think it would take much for Microsoft to back down. * Apple sued Microsoft back in the day for stealing the look and feel of Mac OS, and failed. So that argument can be very…
Under U.S. law, copyright protection automatically affixes to any original work of authorship that becomes fixed in any tangible medium of expression. It does not extend to ideas themselves.
Illegal copying can occur by exact copying of source or object code or by paraphrasing (misappropriating a program's structure or architecture, its inter-modular relationships, and/or its algorithms and data structures, at least insofar as these elements do not constitute unprotectable ideas - this can occur by copying the fundamental essence or structure of a copyrighted work even while rephrasing or restating it in immaterial respects).
Impermissible copying can also involve exact duplication of a user interface, or a "paraphrasing" of that interface (e.g., by creating screen displays and menu commands which are very similar but not identical to those of a copyrighted program).
Though interface elements can potentially be copyrighted, the advice you give is sound in most cases because of the courts' reluctance to give any party a monopoly on interface ideas in the guise of copyright (thus, Apple had sought unsuccessfully via copyright to gain exclusive use of a variety of interface elements, such as a visual depiction of a trash can). This is where "look and feel" cases become so difficult - who wants to give anybody exclusive rights via copyright, for example, to the basic ideas behind a spreadsheet? That is why many of those older cases failed.
In spite of this, I don't know that I would simply dismiss the look-and-feel aspect of this case based on the interface involved here. On its face, there appears to be more involved with this interface than mere ideas and, when there are creative forms of expression involved, and the copying is exact or so significantly "paraphrased" as to be almost indistinguishable, an interface infringement may have occurred.
All of the above, however, is based on a U.S. law analysis and may be irrelevant (at least legally) in China. If there is some way to bring U.S. legal principles into play, or anything analogous to them, then this would appear to be a fairly flagrant instance of illegal copying. While the costs of launching and pursuing a formal legal fight would be great, as long as you have a reasonable venue in which to launch it (i.e., one that respects IP rights) and the resources to carry it through to the preliminary injunction stage (usually 6 to 8 weeks into the case), winning a preliminary injunction would likely work its effect in causing Microsoft to fold, assuming it otherwise is willing before that to fight and is able to survive a horrible onslaught of bad publicity.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#103Plurk's blog page doesn't like being viewed at 1024x768 in Chromium... the left sidebar cut-off by the left side of my screen and the top-right Plurk logo is cut-off by the blog post.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#104Being the co-founder and lead dev of Plurk I can tell you this sucks :-( But we are looking at our legal options, thought legal war with Microsoft and especially legal war at Microsoft in China would require a lot of resources. I think this will become a major concern for all startups that are doing lots of client-side stuff. If people have determination they can copy your code (even if all your code is obfuscated, w…
Look I doubt anyone very high up at MS knows of this and when they do you might be able to get some scratch out of this. They're really going to have 3 ways to deal with this. 1. pull down the existing site while they retool. 2. Pay you a licensing fee while the rewrite from scratch. 3. Do nothing and get a ton of bad press See if you can get 1 or 2 and maybe make some money off the deal.
4. Microsoft could buy Plurk to save face.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Joel sounds like he's replacing Don Dodge.
I was not hired to replace Don Dodge. I was hired because the person who previously held my role moved internally. I actually don't know much about Don Dodge - I haven't met him yet. All that I know is that he is well liked and respected. I can only hope to earn a similar level of respect from the startup community.
were you hired, or were you moved internally?
Its cool that they have someone devoted to worrying about these issues.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no such thing as "more guilty". You are or you aren't.
It indicates intent and state of mind. "More guilty" is just an expression that means "more evidence for guilt."
OK - I can see what you mean. However, I still disagree. De-obfuscation does not provide more evidence that infringement occurred, it simply implies that whoever did it likely knew they should not be doing it, which has (I believe) absolutely no legal implication.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#107Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#108I can't say I'm surprised that Microsoft has stolen yet another idea, but I am astonished that they didn't go to more effort to obfuscate that fact. I'm publicizing this through my networks. More people need to know that the 's' in 'Microsoft' is really a '$'.
I've always found the use of $ when referring to Microsoft to be really really childish, and weird when I see people here, who are presumably mature adults, doing the same.
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#109No surprises here - knew as soon as I saw the story that it was going to be something created by a contracted third-party and that Microsoft/MSN would not have recognised it as a rip-off.
"According to a source familiar with the situation, the Juku application was created for MSN China, which is a joint venture between Microsoft and a Chinese company. However, the source says the application was not designed by Microsoft or the joint venture, but rather by a third-party Chinese vendor hired for the task."
Re: Microsoft rips off Plurk
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious, have you guys tried reaching out to Microsoft at all to get this resolved before going public with it?
Microsoft didn't seem to have a problem with going quite public with it.
It's hard to say that about a company with 130,000 employees and consultants.
I highly doubt anyone near the VP level at Microsoft has any idea that some team in China did this.