Large US company came after me for releasing a free open-source alternative | Hacker News Reader

Large US company came after me for releasing a free open-source alternative

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> I originally had my tagline as "The Free open-source [Company A] Alternative," which they claimed was illegally driving their traffic to my site.

In the UK it’s common for supermarkets to advertise “we price match Aldi”. (Aldi is the trademarked name of a low price supermarket chain). Maybe the US trademark law is different, but I’d be surprised if you can’t claim to be someone’s competitor.

It also occurs that even if their were laws in the US that said that you couldn’t advertise that you were a competitor of a trademark, they’d probably be unconstitutional.

In the US generally it's "oh hey there do you wanna pay to play charades for a decade with our sadistic jackal lawyers who enjoy nothing less than finding ways to cause pain and bankrupt you so that if you somehow manage to survive financially long enough to prevail in court you will at best enjoy a pyrrhic victory while we shrug off the loss as a rounding error?"

This isn't unique to the US. Germany is just as litigious, if not more so, and in general, unless you've inherited wealth or a business, you're barely getting by, so you're very quickly bankrupted.

> Nominative fair use permits use of another’s trademark to refer to the trademark owner’s goods and services associated with the mark. Nominative fair use generally is permissible as long as: (1) the product or service in question is not readily identifiable without use of the trademark; (2) only so much of the mark as is reasonably necessary to identify the product or service is used; and (3) use of the mark does not suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark owner.

https://www.inta.org/fact-sheets/fair-use-of-trademarks-inte...

> You can upload unlimited flight logs for free.

> BUT you can only view the last 100 flights.

> If you want to see your older data, you have to pay a monthly subscription and a $15 "retrieval fee."

> Even then, you can't bulk download your own logs. You have to click them one by one. They effectively hold your own data hostage to lock you into their ecosystem. I am not sure if they are even GDPR complaint even in the EU

1. There is zero reason for this to be an online, cloud-hosted application. This is... a database. 20 years ago, this would have been a 400KB EXE you ran on your computer and that was that.

2. I hope people are not deleting their own logs after uploading them to this service. Surely, users aren't relying on this site as some kind of backup for their data. Especially when their business model appears to be clearly HostageWare.

EDIT-ALSO:

The legal basis for this threat doesn't make much sense. The company is saying that mere mentioning of their company (or product) name "uses the [product] name and brand as a commercial hook to drive traffic and adoption of your unfairly competing tools."

If this was enforceable, how would any project that provides open source compatibility with some company's proprietary format be legal? If I write a program that downloaded fitness data from my Garmin smartwatch and mentioned "compatible with Garmin smartwatches" on the project's GitHub, am I suddenly infringing their trademark? (Not looking for legal advice, just confirmation that this company's position is legally bizarre.)

I totally doubt it’s illegal, but the argument hinges on the trademarked name, not the export tool tech. “Provides functionality with top smartwatches” has no chance of a cease and desist, but “provides functionality with Garmin” might get you one.

Even then, trademark can only be used to prevent impersonation. I can put “better than Google” on my search engine, and as long as there is an obvious disassociation it is not trademark infringement. However, anyone can sue for anything with the goal of bankruptcy.

> If I write a program that downloaded fitness data from my Garmin smartwatch and mentioned "compatible with Garmin smartwatches" on the project's GitHub, am I suddenly infringing their trademark?

Not necessarily, but you'd have to be careful. Depending on exactly where and how you say it, a lawyer might be able to ethically argue that a reasonable consumer could think you're claiming to have a partnership with Garmin. In particular, it would be very risky to use their logo, which it sounds like the OP may have.

(This isn't an actual legal test, but something to drive the intuition why it could be a legitimate trademark issue: if a consumer buys your product and it doesn't actually work with their Garmin, will they blame you or blame Garmin?)

Lego compatible bricks usually avoid saying "Lego", they say something generic like compatible with leading brands. I assume this is to avoid Lego's somewhat aggressive lawyers.

Barbra Streisand sends her regards :)

"Unfair competition" is hilarious. It's just competition. Talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201011142631/https://www.songs...

Not the first time. Spotify threatened SongShift back in 2020 for dare trying to export playlists… talk about “app fairness”!

good to see some civility has entered the scene though. The CEO got in contact and apologized for the aggressive attack on the guy. they're now chatting.

CEOs turning civil when backlash on their company goes viral is a trope as old as time. I guarantee the CEO green-lighted this entire thing in the first place.

Classic good cop bad cop.

“Felony Contempt of Business Model” on the part of AirData.

Anyone know what company it was that he was competing with? I tangentially support one of these cloud drone systems, and it's pretty shitty for the price.

AirData

Fuck AirData. All my homies hate AirData.

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