Why can't Facebook sue Google when most of UI ideas in G+ seems to be copied?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2758586

by evolution • 15 years ago

4 4 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Are they waiting to roll it out to public? Or there really isn't anything that they can do about it?

ig1• 15 years ago

You can't own ideas, only implementations of ideas.

dstein• 15 years ago

Sure you can, every software patent grants ownership of an idea regardless of whether it is implemented, or even an invention.

petegrif• 15 years ago

No - it has to be an invention. In other words, whether someone chooses to implement it or not the description section of the patent has to describe the invention in such detail that it can be implemented by someone with ordinary skill in the art.

jeggers5• 15 years ago

As @ig1 said, Facebook don't own ideas. (unless they patent them).

They do have a very (very) specific patent on the News Feed if I remember correctly. Google does seem to have the same implementation as Facebook. I haven't heard anything about it though so I assume it's not an issue.

Why can't Facebook sue Google when most of UI ideas in G+ seems to be copied?

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