Is it forbidden to sell a device that mimicks a third party&#39;s device USB descriptor? This is a pretty USB specific question, I was redirected here from the technical stack exchange. I am trying to figure out what the legislation is around the development by company A of a USB peripheral for use by hardware/software developed by company B, where company B developped a peripheral that A's device is a clone of (in term of functionality - they're not stealing the implementation/blueprints). Company B did not consent to anything. Company B is having its hardware/software check the USB descriptor of the peripheral in various ways before accepting to use it. Vendor ID, Product ID, iManufacturer... Long story short, let's say the product will only function if its USB descriptor entirely mimicks company A's product's USB descriptor. What does the law say about mimicking USB descriptors ? Is there a uniform law over countries on this subject ? To give a concrete example, let's consider third party controllers for a video game console. Company B sells consoles, and special USB controllers that use a custom protocol to communicate with their console, which looks for a given VID/PID to try to communicate with the controllers. Company A wants to manufacture third party controllers and sell them. Doing so requires using company A's product's VID/PID, or they can't work. Can they proceed ? What is there to consider ? Are all companies currently doing this breaking the law ?
I suspect contract law will affect the ability to do this. Terms like "USB" and the associated logos etc are intellectual property (trademarks, copyrights, etc) owned by the USB Consortium. If you don't comply with their terms, you probably cannot describe your product as a USB product. THE USB-IF LOGOS MAY BE USED ONLY IN CONJUNCTION WITH PRODUCTS WHICH HAVE PASSED USB-IF COMPLIANCE TESTING AND ARE CURRENTLY ON THE INTEGRATORS LIST. THIS REQUIRES THAT THE COMPANY BE ASSIGNED A USB VENDOR ID NUMBER.
They may or may not be violating the license. It's quite possible, even likely, that Microsoft has a license agreement of some sort in place with MongoDB that permits their use. Neither party, however, would be under any obligation to disclose this license to 3rd parties. If indeed there is a violation, a legal action might eventually take place. The usual first step, however, is a demand letter. Again, unless or until a court filing actually takes place, we're in the dark. Totally hypothetical here but the result could be anywhere from an agreement between the parties to damages to cease-and-desist orders. Perhaps some combination of these. I believe Microsoft has offered this service for some years now, so the lack of any visible action on MongoDB's part seems to indicate that they are good with what is going on. Microsoft has almost certainly made an agreement with MongoDB that covers this use. Note also that the license you refer to is not necessarily the only license that this product is offered under. Many companies, and I don't think MongoDB is any exception, offer &quot;free&quot; or low cost licenses for some purposes and then also offer &quot;enterprise&quot; licenses for commercial/large-scale use. As the licensor here, MongoDB is under no obligation to offer one and only one license option to potential licensees.
The connector is patented, as you see here. It contains 57 claims which define what is protected, and 35 USC 116 spells out the logic of claims (which, in a nutshell, says "this can get really complicated"). The set of claims defines what it patented, and infringement is defined in 35 USC 271 as whoever without authority makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States or imports into the United States any patented invention during the term of the patent therefor, infringes the patent that is, there isn't anything statutorily more specific about how similar similar is. Since the claims define what is protected, this generally is taken to refer to things that are the same w.r.t. to all of the claims. "Generally" means that there is a doctrine of equivalents, exemplified by Warner-Jenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co. 520 U.S. 17, whereby a court may find infringement when there is an insubstantial difference between the allegedly infringing thing and the protected invention. The Apple patent does not specify a specific number of millimeters between the contacts, so making a connector that is exactly the same as the Apple device (as marketed) but with different spacing on the connectors would be an infringement, because that spacing is not specified in a claim. A similar device that uses chewing gum rather than magnets to keep it together would not likely be found to be infringing since that is a substantial divergence from what Apple claims it has invented.
IANAL, just a programmer with an interest in legal rules. Due to the very permissive nature of the MIT license, no, it does not appear that anything illegal has been done. Specifically, the section to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software (emphasis mine) grants everyone the right to modify your code and share those modifications, provided one includes the license. Since this person has included your license (including your copyright notice), they have followed the conditions of the license and are able to share your stuff. Legally. Ethically, I still think its ****. This might be a good starting point in selecting a license (note the Modification column). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licenses The CC-BY-SA license family, as mentioned by Ron Beyer in comments is on this list, for example. TL;DR: You unfortunately granted a more permissive license than what you wanted/needed to. This was a BadThing(TM), analogous to giving too broad of access rights to a method or class. Determine your desired permissions, then select a license that matches what you'd like to grant.
It depends on the warranty itself. Here is one warranty, which only protects against manufacturing defects and excludes any software issues (whether pre-installed or user-installed). I'm a little surprised that a manufacturer is willing to include someone else's software under their warranty. This also excludes failure or damage resulting from misuse, abuse, accident, modification, unsuitable physical or operating environment, natural disasters, power surges, improper maintenance, or use not in accordance with product information materials failure of, or damage caused by, any third party products, including those that X may provide or integrate into the X product at your request This does not say &quot;If you change the OS, you void the warranty&quot;. But, if you change the OS and that causes hardware damage, that voids the warranty. The next question is, what evidence do you have that the problem is a manufacturing problem rather than a consequence of changing the OS. They would have to answer the same question in court. It is legally absurd to claim that you have to prove that it is logically impossible that you contributed to the problem, you only have to prove by a preponderance of evidence, when you take them to court. The burden of proof rests on the person who makes a claim. You claim that the product was defective, now you must prove it. But you don't have to prove it to the standard of absolute ccertainty.
No-ish, it is not. The relevant sticking point would be in their DMCA takedown notice, where they have to follow 17 USC 512(c)(3)(A) and include in their notice (v) A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. (vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed. The key here is having a "good faith belief". There is a credible scenario where a company A could file multiple notices for the actually same material B posted by the exact same person C, where the person has the right to post that material, and do so in good faith. If A was not able to locate evidence of the permission to C, then they would shift the burden of proof to C – "good faith belief" doesn't mean that they have to be right, just that they have to actually think they are. If C also uses the name D, A would not be able to determine that the work was licensed to D based on the fact (once they know that) that it is licensed to C. DMCA abuse is not an permanently open escape hatch. 17 USC 512(4) states Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it. See Automattic Inc. v. Steiner, 82 F. Supp. 3d 1011. The ruling judge found that "Defendant could not have reasonably believed that the Press Release he sent to Hotham was protected under copyright". The appeal court drew on precedent and dictionary to fill in gaps w.r.t. "good faith belief", that the person should have known if it acted with reasonable care or diligence, or would have had no substantial doubt had it been acting in good faith, that it was making misrepresentations In this case, the abuser was flagrantly abusing the takedown system, and there is some reason to believe that in the instant case, the abuser had actual knowledge of non-infringement. Rossi v. Motion Picture Association of America provides an alternative outcome. In this case, Rossi operated a website that appeared (note the word appear) to offer free downloads of movies, and the rights-holder MCAA filed a takedown notice. In fact, it did not offer any such downloads, but MCAA's investigation stopped prematurely. This court held that "good faith belief" is subjective, so Rossi did not prevail. It is no doubt crucial that Rossi actually counted on his customers thinking that you could get actual downloads of protected material. Whether or not a DMCA abuse suit would succeed would depend very much on the factual details of why the material is not infringing, and how easily the rights-holder could know that there was no infringement.
This is unlikely to be a problem. There are many companies that have already registered software-related trademarks prominently involving an X or the name Xcom. That Twitter has changed to X branding does not substantially change this general situation. With trademarks, the general question is whether similar branding causes confusion. It is unlikely that someone would confuse the X display server / X.Org project / X.Org Foundation with the social media service now being branded as X or x.com. Of course, anyone can sue anyone, the real question is whether that's possible successfully. Here, I have my doubts that x.com could successfully demonstrate confusion in its favour. It is worth noting that the X.Org Foundation does not seem to hold any relevant trademark registrations at all. This is not unusual for Open Source software projects and doesn't mean that X.Org has no rights, but does make a defense a bit more difficult. However, there also doesn't seem to be a relevant registration by the ex-Twitter company or by the X Corp. The x.org domain name is unlikely to be threatened. If the x.org domain name was being used in bad faith it could maybe be seized, but the X.Org Foundation has a pretty strong claim on this name. For historical context, both x.com and x.org were among the six single-letter .org/.net/.com domain names when such registrations were stopped in 1993. But while x.com has been pretty much dormant since that company was renamed to PayPal, x.org has (I think) always been associated with the display server software, and has been used continuously by the X.Org Foundation since its establishment in 2004.
Warranty is company policy. It could be considered part of the contract of sale, but it would still be what the company stated it - at time of purchase - to be. Unless the warranty lists accidental damage as being covered, it looks like the company are following their policy and fulfilling the contract. If you were looking for legal redress since accidental damage resulted from using the product as intended, you'd have more chance of success looking at unsatisfactory quality or the product being unsuitable for the intended purpose under Part 1 chapter 2 sections 9 and 10 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It's worth sticking to objective details (for example that the port broke, and that you had used the device as intended). The company are not assuming you broke it (anyone or anything could have caused the accidental damage), and they are not refusing a warranty repair as it appears that accidental damage is not covered by their warranty policy, so this is not one.