Ask HN: Is "no source code was copied" still a sufficient copyright defense?

[oscgam1]

We are all familiar with the Corgi event: https://x.com/mfts0/status/2070080422482977095

With the barrier to create new apps having dropped significantly thanks to LLMs, I am seeing more cases about copyright and unfair competition.

I've seen and participated in some of these cases. Usually expert witnesses are required.

Curious to hear the community stance on this one.

"Now software developers are feeling what authors and artist felt". https://x.com/PriyRanjan96/status/2070204156703568377

There are several claims of: Copying UI is Ok, your product is not undifferentiated enough.

Here is a legal assessment of the situation: https://x.com/jessebradner/status/2070492879718350986

[dlcarrier]

Copyright doesn't cover instructions like recipes, protocols, or APIs; those require patents.

Not looking at the source code has been used to make nuisance copyright lawsuits less likely (e.g. Phoenix and AMI implementations of IBM's BIOS) but it's still easy to prevail when a new work is created by rewriting some else's source code. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....)

Neither copyright nor patent cover a user interface (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Micros....), so that can legally be copied outright.

[aldousd666]

Copyright doesn't cover the results of code, nor the methods used in the code, techniques and algorithms aren't covered by copyright. Period. Copyright applies to 'the work'. If you don't copy the source code, it's not covered.

[scosman]

They copied strings, and visual design. Both of which are work, both of which are covered by copyright.

[wahern]

If you're worried about infringement, register your work with the US copyright office. You can only get monetary and statutory damages if the work was registered before infringement, otherwise you can only get an injunction. But you can't even file a claim in court to request an injunction without first registering the work. Basically, while copyright nominally attaches at creation, without a certificate you can't press any rights in court.

You don't need to register each release, so long as a material portion of the registered work exists in subsequent derivative works.

Without a registration threats of a copyright dispute are mostly noise to someone savvy enough to know how the game is played. If they think you'll persist they can just replace the infringing work or cease distribution, which is a hassle but not a significant deterrence for bad faith actors.

[sandeepkd]

I think there are couple things going on here

The replication/copying has always been there in one form or another. The bar has traditionally been higher for reputation and monetary risks.

Lately the legal bar is the one that going down, ease of replication makes it even more tempting and when big players are doing it at scale (bots) then it validates the strategy in one way or another.

If anything, there have to be downstream consequences of this with time, libraries to pollute the front end code for LLMs are most likely going to get popular and probably one way to make it harder for your IP to be replicated.

[eqvinox]

"still"? It never was. If you copy a (copyrighted) UI in bulk, that's a copyright violation just like copying code in bulk. The legal metric is generally "sufficient height of creation", the actual interpretation depends on where you are.

[victorbjorklund]

It depends also what you mean with copy. The code has copyright but the rendered pixels don’t (other than if something like an image was created pixel by pixel). So if the code is different but the output looks the same it’s not copyright infringement (can still be trademark).

[echoangle]

I think that’s dependent on jurisdiction. This comes up with fonts where what you said applies in the US but in Europe, the actual visual result of the software also counts and is protected (afaik).

[zarzavat]

Copyrights on UIs are nebulous. You can't copyright the functional aspects of a UI, that's the domain of patents, yet the functional aspects are likely the parts you are most keen on protecting. Also you need to prove that they copied you and didn't come up with it independently.

[BikiniPrince]

I looked at those screen shots. The language is similar but it’s not verbatim. The is itself is just the usage of the same framework. Business logic can’t be copyrighted. Is it too close? I agree. Does it cross the legal test. I wouldn’t waste my money on a court battle.

[eqvinox]

I wasn't talking about a specific case, and "UI" is more than a single page. To be specific, I'm referring to the sum of text (incl. translations), graphics and layout on the entire product/application/etc.

I agree the screenshots in the specific linked case - if that's all there is - are nowhere near enough.

[dataviz1000]

Did you agree to terms of use? Did you have to click a check box that you agree to terms of use before seeing or having access to the items you copied? Click wrap. If in the contract that you agreed to there is language that you agreed to not copy the work, then you likely are in breach of contract. If it is publicly available knowledge probably not breach of contract. I’m not a lawyer of course.

[echoangle]

Copyright applies even without the contract.

[glimshe]

Software copyrights are among humanity's worst inventions. We as a species are no better off because of it, and neither are the small creators that copyrights are supposed to protect. Software copyrights only exist to protect a renter model from big corporations.

There's an argument to be made for patent protections, but many of those are questionable considering the number of trivial software-related patents (there must be a patent somewhere for replying to an online conversation through an edit box and an "add comment" button).

I don't know if LLMs can somehow help the situation. I hope they can expose the ridiculousness of software copyrights but I won't be holding my breath.

[stronglikedan]

There are no novel UIs, so copying UIs is okay, and necessary. As for source code, I'm a stickler for the license. The modern set of licenses cover any scenario I can think of, relatively fairly. AI is merely a tool, so the craftsman still owns the output. If the output violates a license, then the craftsman should be held to account.

[pryelluw]

I’ve seen companies get sued and lose in court for copying UIs. So no, legally speaking, copying a UI is not something that companies ignore.

[kube-system]

The look and feel of an interface could be covered under a design patent, which would be a different question than copyright, and a much higher bar to enforce (particularly, protection is far from automatic).

[axus]

I'd argue that software is an "applied art", and needs a "high threshold of originality" to be protected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

Oh and if it's not human generated, you can just copy it.

[robotmaxtron]

copyright is only as good as the enforcement. enforcement is exhausting and expensive.

[alansaber]

Enforcement is well within the capabilities of major orgs (ie nintendo) who litigate internationally

[yieldcrv]

not a copyright issue

there may some other intellectual property remedy, or not, but it isn't copyright

hope that helps

[josefritzishere]

No definitely not. I've never seen a patent include code. They're more likely to describe IP in a work flow diagram.

[pigeons]

How do patents relate to this copyright question?

[kmeisthax]

There's a couple of related issues being conflated here, and I'm not sure which one to bring up, mainly because I'm not sure in what direction the copying would be ruled to have gone. So I'll just mention all the cases.

The first thing to note is that nonliteral copying can still be infringing. Actually, among copyright cases that actually go to trial, most of them are not bit-exact matches ("striking similarity" in legalese). The lower standard those cases would have to meet is substantial similarity, which requires proving both access and similarity. In other words, in order for you to produce a copy[0], you have to have both seen the original and produced something that is close enough if you squint at it.

So let's say Papermark is the original and Corgi Dataroom copied it. If this actually went to trial, a significant amount of discovery would be spent harvesting all the e-mails and messages Corgi's development team sent to one another. Any evidence of knowledge or access to Papermark would probably be enough to prove a copyright violation.

You mentioned LLMs, and some of the tweets here also mention them. I have no clue if either product used an LLM, but it's important to note that in the US, anything written by an LLM does not accrue copyright protection. So, if Papermark was LLM-authored, as a threshold matter, they would have to register[2] a very specific copyright that neatly carves out the LLM-authored bits. The judge would then only consider the parts of the code with verifiable human authorship, which would severely weaken Papermark's case.

In the reverse case - i.e. Corgi Dataroom is LLM-authored - then Papermark's case becomes stronger. Note how I didn't say "AI slop is public domain" last paragraph, because it isn't. There are still unsettled legal questions as to whether or not training on copyrighted works is legal and if using an LLM trained on that work constitutes access to it. Furthermore, LLMs can have search tools that would give them access to code not within the training set, which would also be a more straightforward copyright violation. So if it turns out Dataroom's developers are all Claude fans, and Claude is copying Papermark code, then it's just a normal license violation. LLMs do not launder copyright.

We can also consider the case where BOTH tools are LLM-authored. In this case, there might just not be a copyright case at all. Technically speaking, there would be some third class of plaintiffs who have been infringed, but they would have to choose to sue. It is a long-standing principle in law that you are not allowed to sue for other people's harms[1]. So in this case, nobody would have a case.

> Now software developers are feeling what authors and artist felt

It was specifically the FOSS community that sounded the alarm about training data theft first, because the FOSS community correctly understood coding agents to be an attack on copylefts[3] (albeit through the incorrect belief that LLMs could launder away copyright interest, as opposed to it just being told to make a noninfringing substitute).

[0] I am skipping over notions of fair use and derivative works as they would complicate the analysis and do not apply here.

[1] In general, the operating principle of American courts is "fuck around and find out", and this implies that the court is only allowed to find out once someone has fucked around. Otherwise, the courts could just sue themselves to rule on whatever the hell they want. Isn't adversarial common law GREAT!?

[2] Yes, copyright registration is mandatory in the US, otherwise you can't sue, which is the whole point of copyright. The Berne Convention only half-applies here.

[3] Clauses in licenses that require modifications to the work to be provided under the same license terms. Creative Commons calls these Share-Alike licenses.

[metalcrow]

> So if it turns out Dataroom's developers are all Claude fans, and Claude is copying Papermark code, then it's just a normal license violation. LLMs do not launder copyright.

That's an easy case, but a more interesting question to me is if there wasn't any direct source code access (similar to an open source example I can't remember the name of atm). If you give an LLM requirements matching the copyrighted products capabilities, and it doesn't have Internet access, and it spits out different code that accomplishes the same stuff papermarks product does, do you believe courts would allow that, and copyrighted could be laundered legally?