I agree, its not the same case. The problem might be in 15 years from now, your algorithm might just become a very natural way to solve that specific problem and at that point how your company plays this out matters. My guess is the companies that are in the business of making, creating, producing and then selling software themselves, will be ok with it. These trolls like Lodsys try to neither produce nor create. A very important rule for the any type of patent should enforce "active" product in use/development.
Sadly, it might never happen.
What if your competitor came up with the same algorithm (or very similar) and performs as well both in time and space complexity... and all of this on their own, without actually taking a peek at your code. In that case would you go after them and sue them?
Agree the Dropship s/w itself was in some violation of the ToS, but was the file that was uploaded to the public dropbox share in violation? What I am trying to separate here is, how could Dropbox the company "determine" the uploaded file indeed was the Dropship s/w? [I know in this case it was obvious as the dev had probably linked to it].
I am trying to pose a question to a different level, where how can/will dropbox scrutinize each uploaded file in this manner without actually receiving a DMCA from a third person?
wewyar, like kragen & iamjustlooking pointed out I considered that whole episode as strike1. I agree I am being extremely critical and have to agree in spirit that this is their real goof up. Poor security is not a reason to abandon the ship if they show an intent to fix it ASAP.
What I felt a bit let down by this whole take down thing was, their initial approach was to surpress the hackers rather than fix their problem. I see in another post they seem to addressed it the loophole (?), which is the way to go. Embrace ppl tinkering this way but make your platform robust.
Even I am struggling to understand how exactly did this violate ToS?
Was it "illegal code/file"? No! It was a file to a s/w that had the potential to be used maliciously, but the file uploaded itself wasn't, but hadn't really manifested in that form (yet).
I feel asking the dev to take down the Github project is ok, but blocking/restricting access to the file itself, until proven malicious was a bad idea. And if that part about taking down the HN is true, its a dick move.
Yes, its their platform and from an ethical stand point, being proactive this way helps everyone, but it could have been handled better.