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Affinity Engines Says Google Stole Orkut Code
GillBates0 writes "Wired's reporting that a social networking software company called Affinity Engines has filed a lawsuit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind Orkut, the search engine's popular social service, was stolen by former engineer Orkut Buyukkokten. They claim that he illegally took the code the he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google and that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social network service for Google. '"In its initial investigation, AEI uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com," according to the lawsuit.'"
It was Affinity that was rejecting the neutral expert, and Google that was offering.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Typically in lawsuits like this, if the act was a willful violation of contract terms and/or copyright, they can get rather substantial penalties beyond actual damages. If Google can show that this programmer introduced this code in spite of their efforts to prevent such things, rather than as a result of encouragement to get it out the door, they may be off the hook for these extra damages (punitive and statutory) though I don't think the programmer has much of a chance at that. Of course, establishing the value of actual damages in a case like this is always difficult as well. Hopefully they'll be able to settle with a licensing agreement that makes everybody mostly happy. Google probably has the resources to rewrite everything, but at this point that's probably not practical.
I hope this doesn't put too much of a damper on the 20% projects at Google. They keep turning out a lot of really cool stuff because of those, and it would be really unfortunate if liability forced them to micromanage their research.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
This is true.
I get weird timeout errors. Stay idle for 30 minutes it makes you sign on again(such a pet peeve on websites), fine. But it was doing that to me for 30 SECONDS of inactivity.
2. The message boards are dead
3. Random error 500s out of nowhere. C'mon Google isn't supposed to break!
4. A total sausage fest.
I suggest you RTFA before posting this. Google suggested getting a neutral party to evaluate the claim. Affinity refused. It sounds like Affinity is trying to pull an SCO...
Doh!
a simple promise won't really hold much water in court.
Bah! Not according to contract law in the US...
Have a look here: A contract is any promise or set of promises made by one party to another for the breach of which the law provides a remedy. The promise or promises may be express (either written or oral) or may be implied from circumstances. and here: Contrary to common wisdom, an informal exchange of promises can still be binding and legally as valid as a written contract.An oral promise can be just as legally binding as any written agreement.
Nope. A Cease and Desist is a nasty-gram from the lawyers telling you that you should stop what you're doing. Usually involving threats of lawsuits. An injunction is a court order to stop doing it.
Why?