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q3k :blobcatcoffee:

It's finally happened! NEWAG IP Management just sued us for copyright infringement and unfair competition. This is a civil lawsuit in Warsaw, parallel to a criminal investigation that's happening in Cracow.

Of course, they got our postal addresses wrong (they could've just asked!) so we only just got a copy from the court, but hey, we now have 164 pages of content to dive into.

Lawsuit front page showing defendants: Jakub Stępniewicz, Sergiusz Bazański, Michał Kowalczyk and SPS sp. z o.o.

Personal data (like national ID numbers and addresses) are redacted with black rectangles.
15 comments
q3k :blobcatcoffee:

And yes, it's 164 pages (plus likely thousands of pages of attachments). Part of it is of course the inherent verbosity of court paperwork, part of it is also the fact that they repeat everything for each defendant (and that's three of us + SPS), but a significant cause of it is also that the lawsuit is just pure babble. Is it a case of SLAPP? Maybe, definitely feels like one to me.

We will of course fight this, and we're nowhere near being intimidated.

q3k :blobcatcoffee:

I originally tried to make an itemized list of their nonsense, but I ended up with 18 bullet points of bullshit that still made zero sense. It would be disrespectful to others to have them read that.

So instead of that, here's a symbolic picture of the lawsuit as a whole: them quoting my own code to me as supposedly their IP. :)

Lawsuit paragraph 4.3, showing two code screenshots from our 37C3 slide deck. This code is the C code generated from an imaginary motor controller I developed to explain how PLC programming works.
Fnordinger

@q3k just to clarify: was the quoted code just an example to explain the concept or was it also used to fix the trains?

q3k :blobcatcoffee:

@Fnordinger That was sample code I wrote in FBD first to demonstrate how PLC programming works. It's for an imaginary motor controller that had nothing to do with the problem at hand.

They really, really should've known better.

Fnordinger

@q3k well, that’s embarrassing. Especially given the potential budget for lawyers and experts a train company has.

Godspeed for the rest of the trial!

gaytabase

@q3k lol maybe it's because the variable is called ip

chebra

@q3k

> they got our postal addresses wrong so we only just got a copy from the court

Who wants to bet it was intentional? Bastards always do this on every step of the way.

Cysio :verified_gay:​

@chebra @q3k yeah, it's a common pattern with civil cases in Poland, because if they fail to serve twice the paperwork is assumed to be served

Dźwiedziu

@chebra
Duh, sure. We have a system that allows to make any gov't delivery count as successful, even if the mail is delivered to a bottomless pit, that has a correct address or the person in question never lived at that pit.

@q3k

q3k :blobcatcoffee:

@chebra I think they're just not good at communication. The lawsuit claims that they reached out to us first, but that never happened.

Unless they mean that time when one of their execs dragged us to the side in the Sejm and tried to convince us that actually we didn't do any RE?

Or maybe when their CEO told Redford 'he won't have to wait for a year' - probably confusing him with me, and trying to imply i won't have to bake a birthday cake for the lawsuit threats (which was a 37C3 Q&A quip)?

Leszek

@q3k Have fun!
I hope you'll have the throughput to decide what can be published live, and what has to be held back until the trial.

~n

@q3k Competition? Didn’t know you were building trains too. You seem to have a lot of time for side projects :D

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