Advice: Altium removed our Board name and use it in their videos

[robertferanec]

Hello,

Altium Company intentionally removed our company name and project website from our iMX6 Rex open source project and used it in their Altium LIVE DRILL DRAWING video, without asking us anything.

What would you do? Is not violation of  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License? Thank you for your advice. - Robert

Picture: On the TOP, there is the original silkscreen from iMX6 Rex module. On the BOTTOM, it's a screenshot from Altium Live Drill Drawing video.


Screenshot of the Altium website:

[Mechanical Menace]

Drop them a email?

+1. Always try the friendly approach first. The worse that can happen is an uppity response.

[robertferanec]

I regularly speak to Altium. The thing is, two days ago I spoke to them and I pointed this problem out (it's not the first time, they used our project in their videos without referring to it, but removing our company name from the silkscreen, that really is too much). I am not sure when exactly this new video appeared, but according to Altium Facebook it was yeasterday.

[ElektroQuark]

Send them an invoice.

[HighVoltage]

It seems like, you are not in the USA.
Otherwise your attorneys would have filed a lawsuit already.

[EEVblog]

Legally 
But it is being a bit duchebaggery. There is no real reason for them to not give attribution here and keep the silkscreen if they are using someone else's board file.
In fact it's good community relations to promote projects that are using Altium.

[Ice-Tea]

Well, seems in bad taste at least... 

[robertferanec]

Legally 
But it is being a bit duchebaggery. There is no real reason for them to not give attribution here and keep the silkscreen if they are using someone else's board file.
In fact it's good community relations to promote projects that are using Altium.

I keep asking exactly the same question.

[robertferanec]

It seems like, you are not in the USA.
Otherwise your attorneys would have filed a lawsuit already.

We are also located in the US. The thing is, I would rather cooperate with them.

[Wilksey]

Ooh, the nasty bastards!

Tip #1 to a good business model: Do not rip off your customers!

To blatantly rip off your design and remove your branding is totally unacceptable, open source or not, to not ask if they could do so or even put a credit to you somewhere is totally unacceptable, especially for a company such as Altium.

(I must admit, I thought you worked for Altium with the level of detail and knowledge that you include in your most excellent videos!)

I would talk to them first, ask them to pull the video and remake it with your name retained, if they refuse, I don't know what you have in your country, here in the UK we have a "small claims court" which are supposed to be for things such as this, but you don't always win!

[nitro2k01]

I wonder if this might be done, not out of malice, but due to an overly cautious lawyer being concerned about diluting your trademark under the Lanham Act. Also, be wary of any contracts you may have signed with Altium that would give them the explicit right to do this, for example if you've shared this schematic on their site, assuming they have such a service for users. Again, I would echo what people have said. Talk to them and try to sort it out in a friendly manner first.

[Rasz]

It seems like, you are not in the USA.
Otherwise your attorneys would have filed a lawsuit already.

Germany is a good place to sue when open source license gets violated, Judges there like to do things like prevent imports to whole EU as a countermeasure, makes companies  'do the right thing' quick.

[robzy]

Unfortunately I think that Altium are legally in the right (although morally in the wrong).

For example - if Dave were to take a PCB out of a commercial device, he is allowed to show it in a video. He's even allowed to cover up any branding and show it in the video.

He's allowed to delayer the PCBs and post high quality photos on the EEVBlog website if he so wants.

All without saying where he actually got the PCB from.

Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

Rob.

[Mechanical Menace]

Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

They haven't taken a product and blanked out the brand name, they've taken a copyrighted design specifically licensed for none commercial use by attribution to the copyright owners and passed it off as their own for commercial gain.

[robertferanec]

(I must admit, I thought you worked for Altium with the level of detail and knowledge that you include in your most excellent videos!)

I have never worked for Altium. I am very happy you like the videos - it's good to hear something positive today

[kaz911]

Well if Altium can "pirate designs and use them commercially" - can't we just do the same? An Altium "Download license" seems very appealing *G*

[mcinque]

Unfortunately I think that Altium are legally in the right (although morally in the wrong).

In one word: NO.

It's not like teadowns ok picture galleries, not even close for me.

Disgusted. 

[cyr]

For example - if Dave were to take a PCB out of a commercial device, he is allowed to show it in a video. He's even allowed to cover up any branding and show it in the video.

I am absolutely not a lawyer, but there is a big difference between taking photos of an object and making use of design files that are covered by copyright...

[MatthewEveritt]

Unfortunately I think that Altium are legally in the right (although morally in the wrong).

For example - if Dave were to take a PCB out of a commercial device, he is allowed to show it in a video. He's even allowed to cover up any branding and show it in the video.

He's allowed to delayer the PCBs and post high quality photos on the EEVBlog website if he so wants.

All without saying where he actually got the PCB from.

Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.

Rob.

There's a world of difference between a piece of hardware (generally) sold with no well defined license and a design with a specific Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Arguably a company would be well within their rights to issue Dave a DMCA takedown if he made a video with that much detail, same as if he reverse engineered it and posted design files, or sold them to a shady manufacturer. They don't bother because he doesn't reveal that much of the design, his use of the material is clearly not intended to infringe copyright and his videos are good exposure for their products.

If Altium started building and selling robertferanec's design without his branding there is no possible question that they would be violating the license. Why would using the design in a non-hardware context be any different? You could argue that the video is non-commercial, but you can't argue that they didn't modify the design (by removing the branding) and failed to provide attribution. An dickish violation of the license.

[JuKu]

The video is done to promote sales, clearly commercial.

Really dumb move, causing a lot of badwill to the company. Instead, keep the logo and ask permission; any company would be happy for the publicity, and the image of Altium would be supporting their customers, instead of stealing from them.

[Mechanical Menace]

Arguably a company would be well within their rights to issue Dave a DMCA takedown if he made a video with that much detail,

Erm, fair use

same as if he reverse engineered it and posted design files

Again that depends. A lot of it on the purpose of the reversing and the details released, a lot of it on which jurisdiction the site hosting the files operates under and the jurisdiction of those reversing the product.

In the UK I can reverse engineer something for personal use, but I can't even publish specs. Our idea of fair use (fair dealing) is also much less liberal than the US's.

In the US the persons involved with reversing something and producing the specs can't be involved with the reimplementation, but as long as it is for interoperability reasons that's about the only problem.

In some parts of Europe you can do both the reversing and reimplementation and it still be counted as a "clean room" reverse engineering project.

That doesn't get around any patent issues, but only stupid patent laws allow software patents and I think almost every jurisdiction forces holders of a patent vital to a standard to license them at reasonable rates or lose the patent.

[adam1213]

Arguably a company would be well within their rights to issue Dave a DMCA takedown if he made a video with that much detail,

Erm, fair use
....

Indeed fair use for Australia - http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ca1968133/s41.html

[Rufus]

What a pile of drivel this thread is.

Did they remove anything or just turn off display of text on silkscreen layers to avoid the distraction of information completely irrelevant to the aim of their video?   

If I get some of these PCBs made without silksceen to save cost are you going to sue me for breaking licensing conditions or issue DMCA takedown notices if I post a picture of one on the web?

What would you do?

Nothing at all because coming across as a whiny butt hurt fool would do far more damage to my project than lack of obvious attribution on some obscure Altium video about drill drawings.

[mamalala]

What a pile of drivel this thread is.

Did they remove anything or just turn off display of text on silkscreen layers to avoid the distraction of information completely irrelevant to the aim of their video?   

If I get some of these PCBs made without silksceen to save cost are you going to sue me for breaking licensing conditions or issue DMCA takedown notices if I post a picture of one on the web?

What would you do?

Nothing at all because coming across as a whiny butt hurt fool would do far more damage to my project than lack of obvious attribution on some obscure Altium video about drill drawings.

Does that work the other way around as well in your world? For example, if i take Altium Designer, remove the strings referring to Altium (or just disable printing them), and then hand out the resulting package as a freebie for some obscure "How to layout a PCB" course?

Greetings,

Chris

[robertferanec]

What a pile of drivel this thread is.

Did they remove anything or just turn off display of text on silkscreen layers to avoid the distraction of information completely irrelevant to the aim of their video?   

If I get some of these PCBs made without silksceen to save cost are you going to sue me for breaking licensing conditions or issue DMCA takedown notices if I post a picture of one on the web?

What would you do?

Nothing at all because coming across as a whiny butt hurt fool would do far more damage to my project than lack of obvious attribution on some obscure Altium video about drill drawings.

I was quiet for some time and did nothing. They have used the project files in number of their other videos, posts, seminars .... without referring to the project. But today, it really was too much.