What should you do if your company's code is stolen and being publicly reused without permission?

Claire Pollard May 07, 2017

discuss

I really hate being negative on the web, it goes against every thread of my being, but something came up this weekend that really irked me.

A friend, who shall remain nameless, has spent a long time building up their company and providing code libraries for people who compete in their events. The libraries are very specific to the event, and really have taken time and effort for their developer to write (I'm talking months of development time). You pay to enter into the event and the code is given to you to use in the event exclusively. The entry fee is used to stream the events online, provide support and do all the admin for the event.

Someone who shall remain nameless, has paid to enter the event, they've taken the code libraries for the event, uploaded them to a public GitHub repo, and started running their own version of the event using the code.

My friend has approached this person and asked kindly for them to stop doing it, they did stop for a while (and kept trying to convince my friend to open source the library, which my friend didn't want to), but we have recently found out they are doing it again and running events using the code without permission.

My friend feels pretty helpless and doesn't know what to do next as the person copying the code is quite well known in their community.

What should my friend do?

Claire Pollard

FORTRAN programmer for @CADfix by day, BMX rider by night, robotics tweeter for @Pi_Borg on the side...

Ben Halpern

Link e52c429ee7fe82bfec2d6542cc7b4a04b7d9f886827998833080ac23fcd2f169

You're located in the UK, right? Is the infringing party also located there? I imagine this gets a lot hairier if it is international.

Claire Pollard

Yup. He's located in the US, my friend is in the UK.

Tim Speckhals

Since your friend has written the code, he has the copyright, so he could try filing a DMCA Takedown Request for it to be taken down by Github.

Ben Halpern

This seems like the right first step. Your friend seems to be in a good position to take legal action, but getting tied up in litigation isn't the most pleasant experience.

There's also the court of public opinion. If the infringing party does not want their reputation injured, putting the issue in the spotlight could be an effective move.

Nathaniel Paulus

I agree. GitHub processes lots of DMCA take-down requests (505 in 2015), so I expect they have learned to process them quite well. They have a page explaining the process: help.github.com/articles/dmca-take...

Claire Pollard

That was going to be my friends next step, but we don't know what to do about physically running the events. Now they has a copy of the code, they can just keep doing it whether we do the takedowns or not.

taghatle

Since the person is well-known in the community, it might be a good idea for your friend to go public with this information. Not like doxxing or anything, just a blog post or something saying "Please be aware that so-and-so is using my code without permission for this-and-that, the only legitimate use of this code is in my event, xyz". It can be intimidating to call out well-known people but if they're doing this to your friend, they are probably doing it to someone else as well.

Ben Halpern

I agree that this could be the most effective course of action. And you've got us as an ally in this dispute 😊

Claire Pollard

Awww, you guys! @taghatle This is probably what they'll end up doing. Just have to wait for the right time/message. I think my friend is kind of hoping they'll do the right thing. I'm not so convinced...

Lenor

I was in a similar situation recently - someone has stolen my code and published "their own" Android app full of ads.
I complained to Play Store, and they removed the app.
But I'd also like to know more about what else can be done.

I wrote a blog post about this experience, full of rant:) smartpuffin.com/someone-asked-me-t...