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Comment by shawn | Hacker News Reader

Howdy,

I'm not sure if this is an appropriate venue, but I wanted to ask the community what to do. The details can be found in that reddit post.

In summary, a trademark lawyer is sending me threatening emails for uploading Magic Leap's API documentation to github. No one viewed these except me. Github's traffic stats show 2 viewers total.

Should I just take down the docs and forget about this? It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening the very developers they're counting on to make them money, so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

Ultimately, I think I'm willing to make a stand over this, but ideally I'd like to not be dragged into court over some 3 month old API docs. What are my options?

The ideal outcome would be that Magic Leap changes its behavior before it becomes the norm. It seems like if we tolerate this now, it's going to get worse later.

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Should I just take down the docs and forget about this?

Why wouldn't you do just that? It's their IP, and they asked politely (as politely as you're going to get out of a lawyer).

It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening

What threat? The strongest word in there is "demand", and (IANAL) I believe that to be standard legalese for "could you not do that?" The implication, of course, is if you don't quit doing that, they'll sue.

so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

What behavior is that? "Could you not distribute our IP/documents w/o our permission? 'k, thx." Because that's what Google's Legalese->English translator gives me.

I mean, if you think you have a legal leg to stand on, knock yourself out. But from where I stand (and keeping in mind that IANAL), it looks like you took their IP, passed it around, and now wonder why they're being mean. Perhaps try putting yourself in their place for a few moments?

> What threat? The strongest word in there is "demand", and (IANAL) I believe that to be standard legalese for "could you not do that?“

Yep, they’re officially called “Demand Letters.” It’s legalese, not stormtroopering.

> What threat?

> if you don't quit doing that, they'll sue.

I think you answered your own question.

But there’s nothing inherently wrong about a lawyer protecting his client / employer’s IP. Sometimes lawyers have to make threats to do that. It’s within their rights to threaten (make demands). If they don’t enforce their trademarks they can even lose them.

You don’t have to adhere to their demands, and if you think you’re in the right and have the financial resources you should probably lawyer up and stand your ground and see what the court ruling says.

But from what I’ve seen Magic Leap is a very secretive company. Secretive organizations will want control of the distribution of information. It’s just how they operate. Apple will fire their best engineers with a single leak. IANAL but if being in control of every inconsequential piece of information is that important to them (even if it’s an API documentation that is distributed to developers), they’re not letting off on this.

Would you’ve taken it down if the email was from a developer instead of a lawyer and had said ‘hey Dave here from magic leap! Great to see you contribute. Noticed you had our docs on your GitHub. We’re trying to keep these in a central place, would you mind removing them?”?

If yes, then just remove it. Perhaps send a feedback message that the legal challenge was really off-putting and hope they want to take this in consideration for similar situations with their community in the future.

I think the comments on the reddit post give you some good information about the perspective of the lawyer, how it is actually their copyrighted material you're distributing (the docs).

They can just send Github a DMCA notice and Github will kill the repo without talking to you.

And any forks of that repo will also be killed.

It seems you're conflating an entity exercising it's legal duty, with entities using the legal system to harass and bully others into complying with unreasonable demands.

Magic leap has created IP using Investor Money. That IP has monetary value, and that value in-part belongs to investors. If the company fails to protect that IP, the IP could lose value, impacting the value to investors. Losing that value because the company failed to act could open up the CEO to breach of fiduciary duty.

I mean, as soon as those docs are out of date, which will happen naturally and probably pretty quickly, you will be providing access to out of date/wrong documentation....and that will hurt the developer directly. Just let them be the source of truth for documentation about the SDK. Honestly, its best for everyone concerned.

Im not a fan of copyright, but this is one case where having an official source of truth is pure good for everyone.

Do you realize that by bringing attention to this, that you're causing people to go find that repo? You're in violation of copyright by making it available, regardless of how many people download/view it. But now, because you're kicking it up on HN, Twitter, and Reddit about it, you're making their case stronger. Just take it down, this is not worth the effort or money.

> I wanted to ask the community what to do.

You should comply and be grateful that we live in a world where you get a warning first before penalties are applied for miscomprehension of laws and of rights in general, not even just copyrights, because not everyone has been historically lucky enough to get a polite warning first.

> In summary, a trademark lawyer is sending me threatening emails

First, that's not threatening, and second, the message specifically discusses copyrights not trademarks.

> No one viewed these except me. Github's traffic stats show 2 viewers total.

That's just not relevant. The phrase you want to investigate here is "making available". Using the phrase in a sentence, one could say something like "I made naked photos of you available to your coworkers, which was incredibly disrespectful of me, even if only illegal on copyright grounds, because you want to be able to control when, where, and to whom those photos are shared, and you only shared them with me on the condition that I wouldn't then go and make them available to other people without your consent, consent which a respectful and respectable individual would get."

> It feels wrong that a billion-dollar startup is threatening the very developers they're counting on to make them money, so I didn't necessarily want to encourage this behavior.

I'm going to give you the best and most difficult to follow advice that you will ever receive: You do not get to make that decision for them. You only get to make decisions for yourself.

> Ultimately, I think I'm willing to make a stand over this

What stand are we talking about here? The copyright case seems very clear cut in their favor. In at least the legal sense, you don't have a leg to stand on.

> but ideally I'd like to not be dragged into court over some 3 month old API docs

Good. That's exactly the right feeling.

> What are my options?

Stop illegally infringing their exclusive right to control how documents that they authored are made available to the public? Stop developing for proprietary platforms that wield copyright like this?

> The ideal outcome would be that Magic Leap changes its behavior

True fact: You don't get to decide for someone else how they exercise their legal rights. If you don't agree with copyright, don't support organizations that leverage it. But be prepared to either lose, comply, or not get caught in the first place whenever you break whatever punishable laws are in place wherever you happen to be.

They're in the right but bullying developers that are advocating for their platform with nastygrams probably isn't going to result in the best outcome for them.

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