"Private correspondence" and "contact info" are not (in general) legally protected, and the contents of the email thread and the Github repo would be subject to discovery no matter what.
Or he could get on the top spot of HN for free and get a massive amount of community support, potentially people who actually will foot his legal bill, for the price of a few hours of writing a blog post.
Have you considered that what the person did in this situation was actually illegal?
Yes, when you do illegal things, it is difficult to defend them in court. But that doesn't make him in the right.
It doesn't even look like he was going to be sued, since he took down the website, and apologized.
It was the kid who went public with all of this, in order to get the clicks and likes.
The person used to work at that company, and then they built a similar project, that looks really similar to that other product.
So something to do with design copyright. You can't just copy someone else's designs, in a similar space, at a company that you used to work for. You probably run afoul of something having to do with intellectual property or design copyright.
And keep in mind, repl.it explicitly does not have any patents (which would be the actual way for protecting an idea or design in the way you're thinking) for anything they have done.
Surely people should be able to see how if you work at a company, and then release a product that copies what that other companies does, and you build something in such a way as it looks very similar to that other product, then there is a pretty big risk of running into intellectual property law or any number of legal issues.
This is a broad category of laws, where you could run into numerous issues. That should be pretty clear.
Especially since there are no patents which protect the exact thing you're talking about. There is no such thing as "design copyright" other than actual, specific designs (fashion designs, specific graphics copy) that are copied. Ideas and software architectural designs are covered by patents. Something replit explicitly does not do.
There are a whole lot of laws related to intellectual property, employment, and contracts. It is a very wide field.
When talking about this kind of stuff, most people have not memorized the exact line number, in the exact paragraph, of laws that cover all sorts of things.
We are talking about hundreds or thousands of pages of law here. There is a lot to cover.
But the point is that there are a lot of laws, related to all of that.
And it is should be pretty clear how there is a risk to run afoul of something having to do with intellectual property, contracts, or the like, if you do something similar to what this kid did.
Which are you referring to? Explicitly. As in, cite the USCC or similar statutes.
You have failed to do this when explicitly asked twice now. If you don't know, then don't pretend there's some IP boogeyman and then handwave it away when people ask for sources.
You're the one claiming they're running afoul of "IP laws" so I'm sure you should also be able to say exactly which laws he's running afoul of, right?
It is in fact not clear which IP laws you're referring to, especially when the ones meant to protect this very thing are not being used by replit.
There are thousands and thousands of pages and case law covering all sorts of these types of laws.
I am referencing this stuff in general. When talking about IP or employment law, or any of this stuff, in general, basically nobody is going to be able to quote an exact line number, because of just how many pages in all sorts of laws, that this stuff covers.
Once again, I am talking about all of this stuff in general. Surely you should be able to see how there is some risk involved in this kind of stuff.
Not sure why you are trying so hard to straw man me on these statements.
Quite clearly there is a significant risk in running afoul of something, if you work at a company, leave, and build a project that does the same thing, and also looks very similar to it.
That was my original statement. And it seems pretty clear that there would be some risk in this.
Not sure why you have to be an asshole about a pretty obvious statement here.
But since you aren't actually addressing this statement directly, and have to go off on some tangent, that I never brought up, I can only assume you agree with my original statement.
You don't have to quote specific lines regulations, but you do need to do something to back your assertions besides just repeating "it's obvious" over and over.
Do you really not see how there would be at least some risk, in cloning a former employer's company, with a similar product, that looks the same as it?
You don't see at all, how that could potentially, could at least have some risk, of running afoul of IP laws, or copyright, or any number of things?
Do you admit that there is any risk at all of this?