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

How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

12challenges.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–209 of 209 posts

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#201

Post by Aeolun »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #196
Aeolun wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they say ‘it depends’ they are a bad one? Of course, you’d have to not pay them for pointless advice, or it gets expensive very quickly.

Ok, so you get a lawyer, ask their advice, realize it's worthless, and then you... don't pay the lawyer's bill? So now you have 2 legal issues, and no lawyer. Sounds like a worse position than what we started off with.

There should be some clause about the advice being worthless. Same as when I buy a product online but nothing is actually delivered?

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#202

Post by creer »

hnfong wrote: post #187
dheera wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird to me that big tech hasn't thought about offering a financial reward with C&D's. "We will pay you $10000 if you C&D" seems like pennies to them, much less than the cost of legal fees, a nice amount of cash for a personal project that hasn't monetized yet. Or a job "We will give you a job offer to work on X if you C&D your own work on X" also seems like a great strategy. If someone has already demonstrated…

At the risk of violating some rules/conventions here about generated content, I put the question to GPT4 and got some rather reasonable answers. It's enough to convince me not to do what you suggested. ---- Offering payment to an individual or entity to cease an activity they should not be engaging in can introduce several disadvantages and potential legal complexities compared to a standard cease and desist letter.…

Good job and totally worth the fee. I'm not even kidding: with minimal effort you now have some things to consider and after that some now reasonably intelligent questions to bring to a real lawyer. You are much further ahead.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#203

Post by zhengyi13 »

fsckboy wrote: post #183
zhengyi13 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on whose advice you value, Deviant Ollam has a video on YouTube entitled "Lawyer, Passport, Locksmith, Gun"[1] where he makes the argument that yeah, you probably should have a lawyer as part of a broader personal risk-reduction strategy. (I understand folk might take particular issue with that last as part of "risk reduction", but I hope that doesn't detract from the earlier parts of the strategy) [1]: htt…

if your risk reduction strategy entails a gun and a passport, you probabably don't need a lawyer who will tell you not to use either to deal with your legal risks. Q: is the locksmith for you getting into other people's stuff, or keeping people out of your stuff? Wondering if we're going for a trifecta here.

The entire theme of the video is that normal people can find themselves in relatively normal, foreseeable situations where you really need one (or more) of these things right now, and trying to access them in an emergency without prior planning/prep is less likely to be successful.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#204

Post by phendrenad2 »

gnicholas wrote: post #186
matheusmoreira wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did your employer have a problem with your small shareware app though? I don't see why anyone could possibly get fired over something like a drive utility.

My guess is that GP's knowledge that led him to be able to create the shareware was derived from his employment, and quite possibly involved trade secrets. Creating and releasing software related to his work likely violated his employment agreement.

That can't be it, see the "If they filed a suit, they would uncover my identity" part.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#205

Post by phendrenad2 »

grow2grow wrote: post #182
phendrenad2 wrote: post #99

Man, fuck Facebook. The one-off C&D sent to anyone who appears to be using your trademark I can understand. Sending the guy a bill for $30,000? Now that involved human forethought. Something seems to be going on over at the Fsckbook legal department and it isn't good .

Yeah, it's called a party. Their office probably blows through $30k of party supplies in a week.

Why don't they just use the Meta-verse? They could save on party supplies. Missed dogfooding opportunity.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#206

Post by strix_varius »

primitivesuave wrote: post #153
strix_varius wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like interesting research - could you share a link to your results?

Absolutely - I created the website pppwatch.com, which currently has searchable aggregates of the data from the official SBA data source [1]. The individual loan search is down right now, not because of any C&D letters, but simply to save some money on the search cluster while I have been revamping the site in my free time with some new analysis. 1. https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/covid-19-relief-o...

Thanks, that led me on a disturbing deep dive... It's super frustrating to know that so many people (even in my city) were handed hundreds of thousands, no questions asked.

Honestly I wish I had used the LLC that I actually own to do the same thing. When the system is designed to promote cheating...

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#207

Post by codazoda »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #179
codazoda wrote: post #177

I once received a cease-and-desist from my employer, who was a big tech company! I had written a small shareware app called JazAwake. It was designed to stop the Iomega Jaz drive from spinning down every two minutes or so. They did not know who I was but the stakes were instantly very high. If they filed a suit, they would uncover my identity, realize I worked for them, and terminate my employment. To make matters wo…

Why did your employer have a problem with your small shareware app though? I don't see why anyone could possibly get fired over something like a drive utility.

The cited problem was trademark infringement. I had used “jazAwake” as the name and the drive was the Iomega Jaz(tm) Drive. They also mentioned that it might shorten the life of a drive, but that was not their primary complaint.

Re: How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech

#209

Post by smallfryty »

JohnFen wrote: post #17

This is a great writeup. I am not a lawyer, but I've received several C&Ds for various things over the decades. The first one scared me to death. The second and subsequent ones did not, because I understood what they were: just the company saying "I don't like what you're doing". When I receive a C&D, the first thing I do is talk to my attorney and go over what the C&D is complaining about. If I think I'm doing somet…

Do you have an ip defense insurance policy ?
Post reply on HN