[civet_java]

I am curious how this will play out legally.

Surely UI enough isn't enough to prove that source code was plagiarised?

In the event Papermark chooses to sue how will the defendant defend themselves short of presenting their own (possibly) closed source?

[overfeed]

> I am curious how this will play out legally

I am curious if/how YC will handle this to get ahead of earning a reputation of being a den of scammers - a few months after the Delve scandal

[john_strinlai]

>I am curious if/how YC will handle this to get ahead of earning a reputation of being a den of scammers

flock is a YC company, so it's pretty clear that YC does not care about a negative reputation. as long as it makes money, nothing else matters.

[overfeed]

> it's pretty clear that YC does not care about a negative reputation.

Perhaps not what the general public thinks, but I assume YC cares a lot about its reputation among VC firms that fund its companies, because VCs don't like being scammed (directly, or indirectly through unknowingly funding scams)

[chihuahua]

Let's recall that YC used to be run by Sam Altman of all people, which confirms what you are saying.

[stevekemp]

Many YC companies do bad things, and I guess they do so independently. There may well be repercussions for the most egregious cases, but I suspect a lot of ill-behaviour simply flies under the radar.

For example only yesterday I got spam from an YC company, Polymath, and I replied back asking where they got my details from - no response yet. Once I get something I'll make a GDPR subject access request, then a deletion request. I hope the overhead of that causes them to rethink their spamming campaign.

But I'm not going to complain to YC about it.

[eloisius]

I have also gotten spammed by a YC startup, but they spammed an email that I use in git commits, and lead with "I saw your fork of $POPULAR_PROJECT, pretty cool!" or something like that and then continued to pester me with their drip program even as I replied asking them to never email me again.

[overfeed]

> Many YC companies do bad things,

My comment was not about doing a generic bad thing - it was about scammy behavior in particular (which ties to the Delve incident). YC depends on the VC ecosystem to fund its companies, and no VC wants to be scammed. If a reputation of cultivating/condoning/obliviousness scammers takes root, that would be bad for business.

> But I'm not going to complain to YC about it.

I am not complaining, or even expecting a moral decision. I'm legitimately curious how this will shake out, for purely capitalistic, reputation-management reasons.

[bcye]

Good luck with referring to GDPR. Try clicking through YC startup list and see how many load GA and other trackers onto their landing pages without a consent banner or even a privacy policy sometimes. It’s baffling.

[Sanzig]

Most likely, Papermark would compel Corgi to disclose the source code during discovery.

[civet_java]

I didn't realise that one could forcibly require a competitor to disclose trade secrets.

Now, INAL of course, but I would think this sort of mechanism would be quite gameable from both sides ( i) a wealthy competitor legally forcing a promising upstart to reveal source ii) a copycat working out some kind of arrangement where the code itself is licensed to them via shell company based overseas.)

[Sanzig]

As with most legal hacks, the courts figured this one out long ago :).

If someone is trying to dig into their competitor's trade secrets via discovery, the court offers multiple ways to safeguard against that. The defendant can identify information as a trade secret and ask that it be protected in some way - for example, the documents may be restricted to "Attorneys' Eyes Only", so while the plaintiff's attorneys can review the material, the plaintiffs themselves are barred from reviewing it. Or the judge themselves may get involved in an in-camera session.

[Twirrim]

There are software engineers that specialise in source code analysis that lawyers will often use in these cases. The engineers will be given access to source code in secure environments where they're not allowed to bring any device in or out. They review, analyse, and write up a report using pen and paper, that can then be reviewed by the lawyers.

[FireBeyond]

Absolutely. It was very similar to one of my first jobs: "Legal Technical Analyst". Not as much time doing deep source analysis, but basically translating things for lawyers: "So as far as this claim of copyright/plagiarism... this block here, that's CS 101 stuff, that block there, that's novel, and does x, y and z".