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ShamefulShamefulPosted Oct 12, 2008 21:20 UTC (Sun) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)In reply to: Shameful by kripkenstein Parent article: Beta blockers? (Nature) It appears that they are suing for breach of contract, since the prof's employer is a licensee and there's presumably some language in the contract/EULA that is allegedly being violated. It doesn't appear that they're claiming that no one has the right to compete with them. The Gnash and swfdec projects have a similar problem, since anyone who downloaded Adobe's Flash plugin and clicked "yes" on the EULA can't help to develop a competing product (or so Adobe claims).
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Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:30 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
> It doesn't appear that they're claiming that no one has the right to compete with them.
Yes, formally they aren't, I agree - because they have no legal standing to do so. However, the lawsuit seems to clearly imply, to me at least, that this is about stopping competition: They mention that the FOSS project is 'willfully destroying' their business, they ask for $10 million/year, etc. Microsoft doesn't ask for $10 million/year from every person that violates their license by installing the same copy of Windows on multiple machines. So this isn't really about licensing, it's about trying to shut down a competitor, as I read it.
Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:47 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] It's completely legal for you or me to "willfully destroy" their business by building a better, cheaper product (assuming no patent infringement or copyright violations). However, if someone signed a contract with them saying that they would not compete (and assuming that this is a valid contract) it is a different matter.
Shameful Posted Oct 13, 2008 5:55 UTC (Mon) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]
That's a good point, however, the article seems to imply the licensing issue in debate here is reverse-engineering of their product and file format. Even if the licensing agreement prohibits that, I don't see how $10 million/year makes sense, especially since it is "until they stop distributing their program". Seems like a clear attempt to stop competition.
Re: Shameful Posted Oct 15, 2008 6:24 UTC (Wed) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Techdirt calls this “felony interference with a business model”.
Shameful Posted Oct 16, 2008 6:01 UTC (Thu) by dberkholz (subscriber, #23346) [Link]
The problem is that vast numbers of the people interested in working on such a tool will already be at a university with an EndNote license. That smacks of monopoly to me.
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