Daily tips and tricks from the experts at Adafruit!
View this email in your browser

Wayback
Federal Judge Says Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine A Perfectly Legitimate Source Of Evidence @ Techdirt.

The potential uses of the Wayback Machine in IP litigation are powerful and diverse.  Historical versions of an opposing party’s website could contain useful admissions or, in the case of patent disputes, invalidating prior art.  Date-stamped websites can also contain proof of past infringing use of copyrighted or trademarked content.

Read more & source.


Ok! So this is really interesting, if you’re a maker business at SOME point you’re going to end up either needing to send a letter about a trademark or copyright or you’ll also likely receive one. Sometimes in our experience it’ a matter of “proof” if you created something before someone else or have examples of something that was changed later. The Wayback machine is SUPER HANDY.

One specific example that we ran across is when a community designed logo that was based on another logo in the open-source world came under fire. The open-source group with the logo didn’t like that there was another open-source effort with a logo based on its logo. Lots of back and forths happened and neither “side” was budging, the goal was to get a coexistence agreement so both can be around making it clear that one will not do what the other does. Things were at a standstill when the Wayback machine was used to show that the logo in question was based on someone else’s logo too AND the original designer was OK with the usage(s). Without the Wayback machine it would be difficult to “prove” that the logo was designed years before any of this happened. The end result was a coexistence agreement and eventually a new logo for the new open-source group will be made any way.

Osi
Here’s the logo in question and some of the back story.