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Comment by user-the-name | Hacker News Reader

As he said, he did not want to burn his bridges.

That’s a pretty interesting thought experiment. How likely is it to burn bridges with a multibillion dollar corp by taking them to court to protect your IP? They might even respect you for it. Most likely the people working there will move on eventually and especially if they are responsible for IP theft that results in a heavy legal bill. Companies sue each other over ip all the time and then still do business with each other. I’m also assuming OP’s bridges with the persons directly responsible are already burnt. So which bridges exactly are being protected?

I don't know much about law, but I wonder what the ballpark out-of-pocket legal costs might look like for an individual going after a large corporation with an IP suit... i.e. how likely is it the corporation could win simply by dragging out proceedings and exhausting your resources / burying you with legal fees?

You’re right but it kind of renders copyright law to be another elitist construct. I wonder if there are lawyers or organisations who take up these types of cases to negate the behaviour you have outlined. Would EFF for example find it in conflict with their mission?

You don't need to get into legal proceedings, if the facts are clear.

If you can prove it's your invention, and they're distributing it without your permission, they won't want to waste money defending a suit.

You may be a little guy, without enough dosh to launch a suit; but you could sell your interest to $COPYRIGHT_TROLL, then they'd be in trouble. So just ask them nicely to propose a settlement.

It's not like war, or anything; tech-company legal departments are there for just this kind of thing. Unless there are arseholes involved, it can all be friendly and business-like.

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