Internet Brands claims against XenForo

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Floris said:
I miss the vB staff posting on vBcom. Do they have a gag order on the matter, or are they not expressing themselves because they kinda agree that IB is eh ... IB-ing.
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I think it's a mixture of the two. Even though Wayne or Steve would never admit it.
 
Without knowing the specific allegations, it's difficult to even think of applying case law. I'd find it hard to believe that a company can sue an ex-employee for using skills honed on the job and that doesn't qualify for copyright infringement. IB/Adrian used the word "refactored" as if the Xenforo team took VB and gave the code a facelift. Perhaps you can stretch it with look and feel issues... which seem a bit of a strain since, at least over the hood, Xenforo and vBulletin are nothing alike. I put up a long blog post last night analyzing the vBulletin post which, IMHO, seem rather vague and doesn't pinpoint anything specifically.
 
Hey Ryan, yea, looks like, my users are really excited about XF, and they actually pay the bills. :)

Going to start a XF style biz?
 
Elizabeth said:
Maybe not but they were working for a California company which IB thinks has jurisdiction.

Actually that law SUPPORTS KM&A, not IB.
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Actually IB bought Jelsoft - a UK company - and it is Jelsoft which owns (still do AFAIK) the rights to vBulletin and employed Kier, Mike et al.
I'm pretty sure the case would be UK based.
The vBulletin announcement reads
If the proverbial shoe were on the other foot and rather than buying vBulletin, Internet Brands had instructed our engineers to essentially copy the software, we would have been law breakers. But Internet Brands chose to play by copyright rules and bought the vBulletin intellectual property. And, in our opinion, no matter how Kier, Mike, and Ashley try to “spin” their actions, they have not. A key test for infringement is a determination as to whether a substantial portion of the underlying work amounts to an expression of the prior work. We believe we will be able to easily show that Xenforo is infringing under this test. We have numerous other claims against Xenforo that we believe are equally strong.
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Which more than implies that Kier and Mike have copied vBulletin code. That assertion is utterly ridiculous since we know (they have posted) that xenForo has been developed from scratch using the zend framework. As soon as the code is released, the whole world will be able to see the code and whether or not it has been copied. It would be equally ridiculous to think Kier and Mike would be so stupid as to copy vB code (even if that were the best way to proceed), since it does not take a genius to anticipate that IB would at least examine it to see if they have a case. Point of fact, they have issued this law suit without being able to examine the code first. If their 'other claims' are as strong as this one, the UK judge will kick them out of court pretty quickly.
 
tickedon said:
I don't think any of them have covered software, but, they've covered manufacturing and the UK courts have been pretty consistent at applying "good old law" to "new problems" presented by online issues, software etc...

Although I hope it doesn't get that far, I do kinda hope that Internet Brands Inc v XenForo Ltd gets added to that list :)
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What's your opinion on this? Specifically about applied versus filing? Dunno if that's just a UK thing or he was comparing UK law terms to US law terms.

Shanj said:
There is no court case.

1. The most that IB can have done in the UK system is APPLIED for a court case. That's very different to actually filing a case.
Their application has to be assessed by the CPP - and is most unlikely to be accepted, because copyright involving international laws and the internet has always failed before.
Assessment could take years as the CPP is overworked and this wonj't get priority, too specialist.
If VB want to waste money on a private case they can. It wouldn't b e hard to rebut and the publicity would do XF good.

Either way if a case starts chugging through the red tape it'll take ages and there are many blocks that can happen to it.
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TheLaw said:
Without knowing the specific allegations, it's difficult to even think of applying case law. I'd find it hard to believe that a company can sue an ex-employee for using skills honed on the job and that doesn't qualify for copyright infringement. IB/Adrian used the word "refactored" as if the Xenforo team took VB and gave the code a facelift. Perhaps you can stretch it with look and feel issues... which seem a bit of a strain since, at least over the hood, Xenforo and vBulletin are nothing alike. I put up a long blog post last night analyzing the vBulletin post which, IMHO, seem rather vague and doesn't pinpoint anything specifically.
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Michael could you link to your blog post?
 
Stuart Wright said:
Actually IB bought Jelsoft - a UK company - and it is Jelsoft which owns (still do AFAIK) the rights to vBulletin and employed Kier, Mike et al.
I'm pretty sure the case would be UK based.
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I KNEW the UK law would support them but apparently so does CA law....which leaves IB in a pickle.
 
I would at this point consider selling my two vB4 licenses and switching to Xen, but the plugins...it's all about the plugins! :(
 
I would anticipate a pretty rapid explosion of XF mods given the excitement over the product, and the ill feelings towards IB.

My .02
 
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