Company Claims Orkut Stole Orkut Code
from the more-Google-lawsuits dept
It's not like it's particularly difficult to write a social networking systems. These days, at the rate new ones are coming out, it practically seems like a typical first year CS student's project. Still, a company named Affinity Engines that builds social networking products for universities (that just so happens to have been founded by Orkut Buyukkokten - the creator of orkut.com) is now suing Google for stealing their code. From the article, it sounds like they have a pretty solid claim. First, it's obvious that Orkut had access to the code. He even continued to work on it while he was at Google. According to the lawsuit he promised repeatedly that he wasn't going to work on a similar app for Google, but then did so anyway. The real damaging point, however, is that Affinity Engines claims they've found nine identical bugs in Orkut that are also in their own system -- which certainly makes it quite likely the basic code is the same.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Hard to refute that one
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Hard to refute that one
The author sued for copyright violation and lost, all the way to the Supreme Court. (You can't copyright facts.)
(The question was: What was Lt Columbo's first name? The incorrect answer was "Phillip". In fact the show never revealed his first name.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Hard to refute that one
[ link to this | view in thread ]