LLM generated code could have very similar pattern to existing code with stricter license it trained on. So, it's better to keep them to yourself instead of bothering the public.
Since the Tweet is small enough and a lot of people aren’t reading it (Twitter links don’t work well for those without an account some times) I’ll quote it here
> Hey Nico,
> It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code.
> We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately.
> It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud.
> It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.
What's with this response in the Twitter thread??:
"This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public"
Yes he's trolling. His bio is "CEO at @IronGorillaAI - proudly replacing white collar work with autonomous AI agents, one job at a time. American emigrant." and look at one of his recent posts lmao
> THIS GUY ONLY WANTS 7 DAYS IN OFFICE.
> At @IronGorillaAI, we run on the French Republican Calendar.
> That’s 10 days a week.
> We mandate all 10 in the office.
> No hybrid. No remote. No negotiations.
> If that sentence triggers you, you were never built for this anyway.
> The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...]
The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right.
I did an interview a couple years ago when Corgi was first hiring engineers. Nico and I ... did not click and it was probably the least smooth interview I've ever had despite it just being a phone screen.
I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it.
Mostly because open source projects rarely sue. If you did this to a more litigious company there's a decent chance they would sue, and I'd give them about a 50/50 chance of winning.
Hard to say whether this would be ruled as copying the creative and artistic elements, or just the methods of operation. Copying features is fine, wholesale copying UX quickly becomes copyright infringement
He was bragging about working on weekends and comparing his shitty little insurance company to the Manhattan Project a while back. Somewhere he claimed this company/industry is the most important application of AI in the world. I have no doubt they ripped it off, this guy is not trustworthy to say the least..
Kind of serious question: in tech circles is the Manhattan project generally seen as a _good_ thing, these days? Why use it as the example and not, say, Apollo? "We're working really hard so we can build things with the power to kill you all" is such weird messaging.
This absolutely needs to go to court. We badly need to know what the law even is, and this is the most perfectly blatant example we're going to get of bad behavior that might or might not be legal
We’ve normalized stealing code en masse so this will pass as perfectly fine behavior - what LLMs put out is a spectrum of infringement, this is just in the more obvious end.
I'm pretty sure that making new software that replicate the _functionality_ of other existing software is perfectly legal.
If not, how do you explain the thousands of Tetris clones? The thousands of Doom clones? The hundreds of Excel clones (forgot which was the first one, it's not Excel but that's besides the point, which is that's perfectly legal). Another commenter already mentioned Android SDK vs Java, which Oracle (fortunately) lost.
Yes, even the "copywriting" is fair game, unless it's pages and pages of text (e.g. don't copy/paste the documentation).
The design mustn't be identical but if it's essentially identical, that's legal - sometimes there aren't 10 ways to do something.
Now if the question is whether it's legal to publish software written by LLMs, given that they've been trained on other people's code - that's an entirely different question.
The X link has screenshots where the two products have lots of identical pages. Is that IPable? Honestly don't know since I seem to use a lot of products that look like other products (LibreOffice, etc). But the pages for obscure things looking identical is kind of sus.
Yes, written verbiage is subject to copyright. UI is also subject to copyright. The degree of similarity is astounding - this is not an edge case at all.
The lack of understanding of copyright on HN does astound me, however.
This isn't a case of convergent design (OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Word), this is identical word-for-word with a simple s/room/dataroom:
> When enabled, folders uploaded to Rooms will be mirrored into 'All Documents' with the same structure.
When disabled, all documents will be placed in a single folder named after the Room in 'All Documents!
> This action cannot be undone.
- All documents and folders will be permanently removed
- All links and viewer access will be revoked
- All analytics, audit logs, and Q&A data will be lost
- Group permissions and branding will be deleted
IP and Copyright are two different concepts. Protected IP tends to break into trade secrets (protected by secrecy) and patents (protected by disclosure).
Similarly, trade dress and trademarks are related but different, and in USA most Trademarks™ are not Registered® (although to get ® you generally use ™ along the way), and most trade dress is not either.
90 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 97.4 ms ] thread> Hey Nico,
> It looks like you didn't vibe code your data room but stole it from Papermark's open source and enterprise-licensed code.
> We demand you take this copyright and license infringing product down immediately.
> It's not moving fast and breaking things, it's fraud.
> It makes the rest of your business questionable and the YC community look terrible.
You have to share the source code even when the user interacts over the network with the software.
The project which uses that code, must also be AGPL,
There are ways to separate it and go around it, for example, using an AGPL auth server shouldn't affect the code where your business logic lives
I am sure they could have found a way to design their product to be compliant, especially following past drama.
This is assuming the code is indeed copied, since we don't know that for sure, it does look very similar but I am not sure how that is enforced
"This ain't what a C&D looks like. Implies you don't actually have a leg to stand on. Upload a copy of your official legal demand (from a lawyer) or I'll forever see your company as one who attempts to bully the competition in public"
-- https://xcancel.com/jacobhartmannx/status/207012600834729596...
Is this just trolling?!
> THIS GUY ONLY WANTS 7 DAYS IN OFFICE.
> At @IronGorillaAI, we run on the French Republican Calendar.
> That’s 10 days a week.
> We mandate all 10 in the office.
> No hybrid. No remote. No negotiations.
> If that sentence triggers you, you were never built for this anyway.
“Team effort”
“:praying-hands (x2)”
And so on… The audacity and complete shamelessness…
I wonder what narrative they tell themselves.
> The team that made dataroom has stated that they did not use any of papermark’s code and that dataroom was made from scratch with inspiration from existing document sharing softwares, and that this post’s allegations of us stealing code are false. [...]
The screenshots clearly show they copied whole pages verbatim, both design and texts. The founder, Nico Laqua, basically responding with "we didn't copy _code_" and not taking any responsibility says a lot about his and his company's moral code. It might not be enough to get sued. That doesn't make it right.
https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2070158170937581951
I wouldn't be that surprised if Nico genuinely thinks "we didn't copy the code" is a reasonable defense. It would be a clear cut rule, and extreme "shape rotator" types often have trouble with the fuzziness of things like law. In reality, copyright infringement is often more like the porn test, you know it when you see it.
Parts of pages. Look at the screenshots. The wording is different between the pages.
Perhaps that’s enough for them. Legal gray area worked for Uber, AirBnB and many more.
As a consumer in not happy though, I don’t like incentivizing companies with such creative approach to law.
That would be my cynical response.
Mostly because open source projects rarely sue. If you did this to a more litigious company there's a decent chance they would sue, and I'd give them about a 50/50 chance of winning.
Hard to say whether this would be ruled as copying the creative and artistic elements, or just the methods of operation. Copying features is fine, wholesale copying UX quickly becomes copyright infringement
https://x.com/nico_laqua/status/2061130574358773852?s=20
The design is shadcn – which is an MIT license - very very popular design system. The text is pretty standard to what I'd expect with any DD solution.
If not, how do you explain the thousands of Tetris clones? The thousands of Doom clones? The hundreds of Excel clones (forgot which was the first one, it's not Excel but that's besides the point, which is that's perfectly legal). Another commenter already mentioned Android SDK vs Java, which Oracle (fortunately) lost.
Yes, even the "copywriting" is fair game, unless it's pages and pages of text (e.g. don't copy/paste the documentation).
The design mustn't be identical but if it's essentially identical, that's legal - sometimes there aren't 10 ways to do something.
Now if the question is whether it's legal to publish software written by LLMs, given that they've been trained on other people's code - that's an entirely different question.
The lack of understanding of copyright on HN does astound me, however.
This isn't a case of convergent design (OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Word), this is identical word-for-word with a simple s/room/dataroom:
> When enabled, folders uploaded to Rooms will be mirrored into 'All Documents' with the same structure. When disabled, all documents will be placed in a single folder named after the Room in 'All Documents!
> This action cannot be undone. - All documents and folders will be permanently removed - All links and viewer access will be revoked - All analytics, audit logs, and Q&A data will be lost - Group permissions and branding will be deleted
Those are clear copyright violations.
Similarly, trade dress and trademarks are related but different, and in USA most Trademarks™ are not Registered® (although to get ® you generally use ™ along the way), and most trade dress is not either.
See also:
- clean room design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design
- trade dress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress
Amusingly, the packaging of a dress is trade dress, but the dress design itself isn't protected.