Affinity Engines Files Suit Against Google Over Orkut Code

[Chndru]

"In its initial investigation, AEI (Affinity Engines) uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in Orkut.com," according to the lawsuit.

"Affinity Engines has not provided any evidence to Google that their source code was used in the development of Orkut.com," wrote David Krane, the company's director of corporate communications, in a statement to Wired News.

[wired.com...]

makes me go hmmm..

[martinibuster]

Uh-oh.

Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[lorenzinho2]

Yikes, sounds like it's going to be a tough day for Orkut (the guy, not the site).

[Shak]

Affinity WHO?

at least they will get a few more visitors to their site today, thats all

lets move on methinks

Shak

[plumsauce]

Add to this their previous litigation problems with the geo-targetting technology which I forget the name of. Is there an emerging pattern of not so whitehat behaviour?

Will they be lambasted with the same criticism that is so often heaped on MS with regard to the 'acquisition' versus 'innovation' of technology?

[loanuniverse]

Did you read the part about Google's willingness to let a third-party review the codes and determine the merit of the allegation, and Affinity WHO? declining the offer.

The only thing that could help would be someone like Yahoo coming in and start licensing Affinity WHO's technology to fund its legal battles kind of what Microsoft does for the people claiming that they own linux.

Hmmmm, did I just give someone an evil idea?

/hides

[Freedom]

One more stupid valley story.

[Jbrookins]

nah, plumsauce, it's not indicative of anything other than it seems to be the "in thing" to sue Google. I mean, even if they lose, it's excellent publicity for them.

I have yet to see a truly convincing case against Google, but every company that's done it has gotten a huge amount of attention.

This one MIGHT have been convincing had they permitted the independant review, but I find that extremely suspicious.

[edited by: Jbrookins at 9:24 pm (utc) on June 30, 2004]

[Dpeper]

*yawns* another one of these?

[JasonIR]

If you read the entire article, you can see that it is quite obvious that Orkut did steal the code. Allegations of piracy are very serious in this business. The part about the launch party really made me think.

[Andy_Abbott]

I think the evidence does look bad for Google but I don't think Affinity Engines can proof that they developed the code with the bugs themselves.