Anthropic won't acknowledge my prior art notice | Hacker News Reader

Anthropic won't acknowledge my prior art notice

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3 pointsalienfader7 comments

Creator here. I built Continuity, a VS Code extension that gives AI coding assistants persistent memory. First commit: October 3, 2025. Published on VS Code Marketplace: October 31, 2025. In 2026, Claude Code shipped:

MEMORY.md (local markdown storage) Auto-memory (automatic context capture) Auto-dream (automatic insight capture)

My codebase from October 2025:

SESSION_NOTES.md (local markdown storage) AutoDecisionLogger.ts (automatic context capture) ConversationAnalyzer.ts (automatic insight extraction) ArchitecturalFileWatcher.ts (file change detection)

Same architecture. Same behavior. Four months apart. I sent three formal communications to Anthropic's legal team requesting acknowledgment of my prior art notice. I tried their support chat again this month. Four attempts. Zero response. I'm not claiming they copied code — I can't prove access. I'm not threatening legal action. I'm asking for acknowledgment that my communication exists. All evidence is timestamped and public: git commits, marketplace listing, support ticket number. Question for HN: What recourse do indie developers actually have when a platform ships their architecture and won't communicate?

What exactly are you claiming?

You don't appear to be claiming copyright as you state that you don't know if they copied code.

Are you saying that your prior art invalidates a patent? If so, would you mind pointing out what patent?

Otherwise, it just seems that you're claiming that you had a similar idea to one that someone at Anthropic had. That's not really something they have any need to acknowledge.

Fair question. Let me be specific. What I'm NOT claiming:

What I AM claiming:

I published a specific architecture in October 2025 They shipped a similar architecture in 2026 I sent formal notice to document my prior art — in case they ever file a patent or claim to have invented this They've ignored four communications

What I actually want:

Acknowledgment that my notice was received That's it

You're right. they don't have to acknowledge me. But "don't have to" and "shouldn't" are different things. If a small developer reaches out professionally about architectural overlap, and the company that preaches "transparency" and "trust" can't send a two-line reply in four months? That's a choice. And it says something about how they treat indie devs in their ecosystem. Maybe I'm not owed a response. But I'm also not wrong for being frustrated by silence.

> The following commit metadata is extracted from the private development history

Nobody is going to acknowledge this.

Noted. What do you suggest I do?

Let it go. Take pride that a company like Anthropic thought your idea was good enough to run with. Aiming for some sort of statement from them is a waste of time.

I'd happily take pride if they'd acknowledged it. A single reply. That's all. Instead I got silence. There's no pride in that,,just frustration. But I sincerely appreciate your input.

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