Hacker News Reader

Comment by berdon | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm. I made the first unofficial Dropbox client for Android years ago called "Droidbox". Different name, different logo, explicit labeling of "unofficial" and they still wanted to sue the pants off me.

View on HN

I made the first unofficial Google Voice mobile app back in the day, and less that 100 people ever used it, so I didn't hear a daggum word from them. Would have been nice to catch their eyes though.

Interesting. I once wrote/sold a voicemail-reading app that logged in, scraped Vonage's web site, and let you listen to your voicemail. I was careful to not use trademarked image assets, but I did mention that my software was compatible with their service, mentioning them by name in the app store description. They never went after me! Maybe I got very lucky, or I was just small potatoes. The app wasn't popular, so they didn't think they could squeeze any money out of me (they would be right).

In theory, this should be okay under "Nominative Fair Use": You're only using the name to refer to the actual thing. People are more justifiably sued when their name for their product can be confused as being possibly associated with whatever they work with.

In practice, you can get sued anyway. You'll probably win, but getting sued sucks even if you win.

Legitimate question, from someone who had just built an app (that will have a cost) that is a helper to Dropbox and has 'Dropbox' in the name.

Where do you think the line is? There are several apps on the Mac app store that have 'Dropbox' in their name and are charged. Is the difference they they are all 'sidecar's that rely on you have Dropbox?

Without a license agreement they're all trademark violations. Pick a non-confusing unique name to save some trouble.

Apparently Box is not confusing with Dropbox.

Box pre-dates Dropbox by a couple of years.

I wonder why they didn't go after a competitor named "Dropbox".

Some negotiations probably happened behind the scenes.

BOX, INC. v. DROPBOX, INC. | United States Patent and Trademark Office [1]

[1] https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=91200450&pty=OPP&eno...

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27035901.

Did you tell them you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem?

For those who don't get it, this is a reference to the greatest HN comment of all time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863.

I definitely laughed after reading this thread. Would advise others to read it.

I was afraid my reference was too old, and people would just downvote not understanding what the heck I was on about.

This one never gets too old. Even with the no-jokes policy here, I can't resist upvoting "you could build such a system yourself quite trivially" posts.

For “greatest comment” I was thinking of cmdrtaco’s comment about the iPod, but I guess that was slashdot.

https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

HN is famous for knee-jerk dismissals of tech and companies that then go on to become wildly successful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19270689

Mostly HN comments about this kind of thing should be ignored. It’s easy to be critical and negative about anything new, it’s a lot harder to be right.

>HN is famous for knee-jerk dismissals of tech and companies that then go on to become wildly successful:

It is extra funny to find this comment considering the top comment in this thread. Someone makes a good looking, simple, and useful app and the top comment is nothing about the work put in, the quality of the app, potential improvements, or anything like that. Instead it is a knee-jerk dismissal of "you’re going to get sued" and "hope you’ve got a lawyer." The more things change...

"What you have built is illegal" is hardly the same as "I don't believe in your vision."

What they built isn't illegal. The naming and branding of what they built likely infringes on a trademark. Either way, the point was more this communities urge to knee-jerkingly dismiss a project for whatever reason. There is often a default of "this is why it won't work" or "this is why you are wrong".

I loved my nomad...

The greatest HN comment is obviously cperciva's: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Yeah, you’re right - that one is my absolute favorite. Even includes a PG cameo.

And getting a 53 on the Putnam at 14 is wild. I wonder how that happens, what leads to that (in addition to obvious high ability).

Good parents? Early access to good books? Do some people just have a more intuitive sense for math? Tons of practice?

>For “greatest comment” I was thinking of cmdrtaco’s comment about the iPod

In fairness, it probably wasn't obvious that Apple had a hit until the 4th generation iPod in 2004. (iTunes didn't even run on Windows to support earlier models when they were released.)

I’d argue it was - maybe not obvious, but I knew it was a big deal.

The nomad and other players at the time sucked (I wanted to get one for my dad). Plastic, poor build quality, software would often freeze up and crash.

The nomad looked like a cd player, why? Just bad design and not thinking about it.

You’re right though that 2004 it started to really take off.

I wasn't really into digital music at the time and only had a Windows system in any case. I definitely viewed Apple through the lens of a computer company. I even wrote a research note in 2003 (as an IT industry analyst) suggesting that Apple should perhaps view itself more as a home entertainment company [1]. I noted that they had the iPod and iTunes music download service but I pretty much mentioned that in passing, perhaps because I was really thinking of home entertainment in the context of a living room home theater system.

I did buy a 4G the following year. (It also took me a few years to get an iPhone after initial release.)

[1] http://bitmasons.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/pubs...

Flyertalk wasn't keen on the next big thing either

"ever since i semi-retired a little over a year ago, i been traveling A LOT and i hated it when people tried to reach me when i am on the plane or out of the country. so i asked myself -- wouldn't it be cool if i just set a status for my iPhone, similar to how you can set a status on yahoo messenger or skype."

Only response was

" It appears that this requires the other party to also have the app installed, right? "

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...

At least with that one whatsapp's original idea switched from statuses to messaging because they saw the users using their ability to set statuses to message each other. That paired with awful SMS in most of the world let them dominate.

That's quite a different thing from what (I'm guessing Jan Koum?) is pitching here. So it'd be easier to not make the jump I think.

I see your dropbox comment and raise you a "did you win the putnam":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

I never noticed that this comment, one of the best known of HN, is flagged.

That reference is plain cruel. You’re a terrible person. :P

I love that HN is largely free from attempts at jokes, but I will laugh at this one every time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com