Orkut lawsuit

I saw this news item: Lawsuit: Google Stole Orkut Code. In summary, Affinity Engines is claiming the Orkut (the engineer responsible for the social networking service that bears his name) stole or re-used source code in the product he created for Google.

I found this interesting for several reasons; one is that I'm an Orkut member.

I'm also on Friendster, but I never really did anything with that beyond barely filling out my profile. I don't remember discussion boards on Friendster, so there wasn't very much to do. Actually, I just now logged into Friendster to double check, after going through the "what was my username again? And what was my password?" gyration. Friendster looks very different that what I remember - now the page has a small section of sponsored links (i.e. ads) around the page. Other than page layout, everything is the same... just profiles connected through friend networks.

But Orkut does have message boards (called communities), which are interesting enough to draw me back to the site. Topics covered include... everything. Essentially there is something to do on Orkut besides look at other people's profiles, and that is post or read in the communities. I find both profiles and communities complement each other nicely: you can read somebody's posts and get a sense of what they think or what they are like, and then also read their profile. Orkut has similar friend networking as well - I sent an invite to my friend who invited me to Friendster but so far she hasn't signed up on Orkut.

The timing is awkward for Google as they are planning an IPO soon and a lawsuit now looks bad. Maybe that is Affinity Engine's strategy - sue and hope for a settlement. The article reports Google has offered to show the disputed code to a third party but Affinity Engines refused.

Maybe Groklaw will pick up the story and add more info.

The other reason this story is interesting to me is the intellectual property angle. I'm a software developer, and workers in my industry are always faced with NDA's (non disclosure agreements), non-compete clauses, and other legal restrictions. Whether or not any of these would truly be held up in court is an open question - the rules vary state by state. As I understand it a restriction of this kind is void in California, and possibly elsewhere. Fundamentally, you can't require somebody "forget" information they learned, or wipe their memory Paycheck style, or deprive them of their chance to earn their livelihood doing what they know how to do. Obviously, stealing code is illegal - it is one thing to learn something at one job and then do similar work elsewhere, and another to outright transport code between employers.

This should be interesting to follow.