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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Does the author stand a chance against the army of ivy league lawyers of a trillion dollar megacorp?

I guess it would help if he's also American (don't know where he's from) so he could fight Apple on home turf and use the jury system on his side like "Evil megacorp steals from the little guy" (does it even work like this in the US or did I watch too many movies?), but I'm more curious how a lawsuit would go if he'd be in a jurisdiction different than the US.

Like, if for example, the author would be Russian, could he sue Apple's Russian legal entity and they would just shrug it off as "Yeah, that's not us who screwed you, go to the US and sue the Apple US HQ."?

As a non-lawyer I'm really curious how the legal system works for such disputes.

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Legally I’m not sure the small developer has a chance. Not because the courts are unjust, it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here. It’s not to say they didn’t, it just doesn’t seem like there’s any slam dunk legal argument about wrongdoing (despite who this might feel morally).

>it’s just hard to say whether Apple broke any laws here

Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?

IIRC the Winklevoss twins got paid handsomely as a settlement for Zuckerberg stealing their idea for Facebook. Granted, they were very rich and well connected so that helped.

Short answer is no, unless a patent or copyright is stolen. I believe the Winklevoss allegations stemmed from a belief that there was some sort of agreement or contract that was violated.

Ideas are not worth much, and there is no law against executing someone else’s idea. Winklevoss twins (or Connect U rather) got paid to shut up and go away at a time when it was obvious $65M was going to be pocket change for Facebook and their lawsuit was going to cost more in time for people at Facebook than $65M.

Thanks for clarifying, although $65M for Apple is pocket change they can scrape from between the couch cushions in Cupertino so they could get the author to shut up immediately if they wanted to.

A lawsuit about equity while a company is on the road to the biggest IPO in history in 2009 is different circumstances than a guy arguing against an established company in 2021.

Apple could pay this guy off, but apparently their executives have decided he is not a sufficient PR problem or time expense to merit a payoff yet.

> there is no law against executing someone else’s idea

Are you sure about that? Obviously, you mean outside of the patent framework and the concept of infringement, so never mind that.

There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.

What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.

>There is law against executing someone else's idea which is public, and over which they have no patent.

What is this law? I am pretty sure flying cars, underwater cities, space travel, etc are ideas that someone else has had, but no US court is going to stop you from executing an idea just because someone else fantasized about it.

>What if the idea isn't public? Not that it applies in this case, but I think there is such a thing as breaking into an organization and stealing trade secrets: ideas that are not known outside of that organization, and are (consequently) not patented.

The theft itself would be a crime, but an entity not involved in the theft would be able to take advantage of the trade secret without any legal liability. That is the tradeoff for not registering a patent to gain exclusivity for 20 years via legal mechanisms.

I'm sorry to have wasted your time, that is a typo; somehow I lost the "no" in "no law".

Winklevoss twins won because MZ was actively telling them he was working on the app in order to prevent direct competition from them while he worked on his own version (in the movie at least, who knows what's really real). If he had just told them to f-k off and ripped them off from the start, everything would have been fine legally. There's tons of prior art for social networks and domain restricted logins before FB came around.

This is not true as there was no completed court case, simply a “confidential” settlement.

https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/connectus-secret-6...

Connect U obviously did not have proper documents stating Zuckerberg was working for them, or a non compete or anything since they were willing to settle. Hence it seems like a he said she said situation where Connect U got lucky that Facebook was going to be so huge that their agreed upon settlement amount was inconsequential to Facebook.

>count as IP theft?

No, there is no such thing as IP theft. There is theft, copyright infringement, trademark infringement, and patent infringement.

Also there is Monopoly\anti-competitive behavior law, which this seems an obvious violation of.

> stealing someone's idea

He didn't invent virtual keyboards on touchscreens. I don't suspect he holds a patent in this area.

That would not be a reasonable basis for a lawsuit, since it could not be expected to succeed.

> Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app/innovation and respinning it into your own implementation count as IP theft?

This makes the assumption that apple hasn’t been putting deep thought into the keyboard design since before the first watch was physically built. I think it’s safe to assume there’s a 30 slide keynote filled with different designs and user study results.

> Doesn't stealing someone's idea for an app

"Stealing" someone's idea to make a keyboard.

The author linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Unfair_Competition_... (I can't speak to its relevance)

A lawsuit will result in the "discovery" process, and very well might show that Apple had wanted to do this thing for a very long time and at some point they realized that a 3rd party had just introduced something similar to what they wanted to do. And people inside Apple proposed buying the company to save time and money. But when he said no, Apple just decided to continue on their plan.

Or the discovery may uncover evidence of poor behavior. You just don't know.

Seriously folks, consumer devices are being used internally for a long time before they become known to the public. UI improvement ideas are being thrown around constantly and are logged, discussed, prioritized, etc. Just because something isn't there on launch day, or v2, v3 or v4 of the software, doesn't mean they didn't think of it or didn't plan to do it.

I’d be surprised if it was that nefarious. Apple is releasing a free OS update that has this feature. What do they stand to gain by removing a third-party app users need to learn about and install? Absent some explanation about an advantage Apple gains I’m willing to believe this has something to do with app store policies than something else.

AFAIK it's not a free OS update with the feature. It's a feature of the new Apple Watch Series 7 that will be available for purchase later this fall.

If Apple writes the laws in the Apple ecosystem does it even matter?

One thing recent history has taught us is that Ivy Leagues are very good at pumping out individuals that know how to win at all costs, with 0 regard for actual expertise or moral compass.

Ivy Leagues serve the purpose of giving individuals the minimal artifacts of knowledge and virtue to get ahead, without its actual substance.

The admissions process is a filter that selects for this. They also build class cohorts to include hierarchy climbers with people who were born at the top of the hierarchy — children of billionaires, politicians, etc. that perpetuate those hierarchies (and their accompanying morality).

Ivy League schools are designed to be a filter for people who would make good amoral agents of capital, not an educational system in the classical sense.

influential people's children who couldn't hack it in the traditional test based university admissions process in their own home countries love the ivies, i.e asian countries. There are a ton of brilliant people who go to ivies on their own merit but we can't deny that ivies do play a part in keeping the elite power structure intact (as you said). It is the same old game of capital vs labor, capital always seems to win out.

If you're Russian you can still sue Apple US. As a consumer you can usually do that in a court in your own country, as a business it depends (most contracts specify which court to use, but you can appeal to a local court that that's an undue burden, especially if it's a terms-of-service instead of a negotiated contract). Of course if a Russian court rules against Apple US the court has a harder time enforcing the ruling, but that's probably not a problem against a company like Apple who want to continue selling there.

I am no expert; but I would never bet my money that justice will be served :(

I think no, but that army matches on quite a large load of cash, so they’ll likely offer him a settlement agreement which means he “losses” but gets paid.

Not fair by any account, but I think that’s what is likely to happen.

If Apple settles, wouldn't that incentivize other developers to sue Apple for the same and similar reasons?

I'd think Apple would want to win the case to discourage other developers from doing the same thing.

I hope a large company comes and helps him out with this case. It will affect many companies.

I mean at the very least there could be a settlement since Apple most likely doesn't want to cause even more bad PR. But who knows.

Probably not.

They will however probably end up settling. Take the money and wait for legislation.

We will only know if they try. Their lawyers may be handsomely rewarded if they win. Justice may be blind, we will see.

Disclaimer: Sorry for postvac ramblings

> Does the author stand a chance against the army of ivy league lawyers of a trillion dollar megacorp?

I'm tired of this meme. Getting better lawyers doesn't let you cheat the law.

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