Did you tell the legal team you were the copyright holder? You don't have to,
but it might let them know you're on to them.
----
Cole Johnson
-- E-mail: [email protected]
-- Twitter: @5urd
Hexware, LLC
-- Twitter: @HexwareLLC
On Mon, Sep 2, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Josua Dietze <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> I will describe my case below, but I'm sending my questions ahead:
> 1. Is the evidence sufficient to prove code theft? Reason enough for a "cease
> and desist" request?
> 2. Does anyone have a recommendation for a lawyer who is familiar with the
> subject?
> (I'm in Germany, by the way)
> Here is the case:
> I'm the author and maintainer of the Linux tool "usb_modeswitch" which
> includes several components to bring 3G/4G USB modems and several other
> devices from "Windows Installer" mode to their actual working mode.
> It's far from being a piece of art, but I have collected a large bunch of
> device-specific knowledge; all major Linux distributions have it included by
> now. It is released under the GPL V2 or later.
> At the end of May 2013, I bought a cheap tablet "TP7-1000DC (light)" from the
> German manufacturer i-onik:
> http://i-onik.de/tp7zoll-dualcore
> In the file system of the device I discovered these files:
> usbdongle
> usbdongled
> libusbdongle.so
> These were obviously involved in preparing and using 3G USB modems on the
> tablet.
> Now, when I ran the "usbdongle" binary from the command line, it said:
> Usage: usb_modeswitch [OPTION]
> ...
> I dug into the binary "libusbdongle.so" and found these literal strings which
> are *identical* to the ones in usb_modeswitch:
> MessageContent %d hex string has uneven length. Skipping ...
> Trying to send message %d to endpoint 0x%02x ...
> Looking for active driver ...
> No driver found. Either detached before or never attached
> OK, driver found ("%s")
> Driver "%s" detach failed with error %d. Trying to continue
> OK, driver "%s" detached
> Sending Huawei control message ...
> Error: sending Huawei control message failed (error %d). Aborting.
> OK, Huawei control message sent
> Accessing device %03d on bus %03d ...
> Ambiguous Class/InterfaceClass: 0x%02x/0x08
> Error: send endpoint not given or found. Aborting.
> Error: respond endpoint not given or found. Aborting.
> Error: could not get description string "manufacturer"
> Error: could not get description string "product"
> Error: could not get description string "serial number"
> USB description data (for identification)
> -------------------------
> Manufacturer: %s
> Product: %s
> Serial No.: %s
> Setting up communication with interface %d ...
> Could not claim interface (error %d). Skipping message sending
> Using endpoint 0x%02x for message sending ...
> Reading the response to the message (CSW) ...
> Resetting response endpoint 0x%02x
> Error resetting endpoint: %d
> Resetting message endpoint 0x%02x
> Reset failed. Can be ignored if device switched OK.
> OK, device was reset
> I contacted the manufacturer "i-onik"; they were quick to release the kernel
> source code - even the whole firmware sources - which was commendable, but no
> source code of "usbdongle". They promised to take care of it, but I haven't
> heard of them in six weeks.
> I have sent them a reminder but won't hold my breath.
> Here is a link to a package with the binary files in question:
> http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usbdongle.zip
> Here is a link to the source code of usb_modeswitch from 2011:
> http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch-1.1.7.tar.bz2
> I chose this older version because there was a copyright notice in
> "libusbdongle.so" stating:
> (C), 2011-2012 Cathay Communication Co., LTD.
> Sorry for the lengthy message and thanks for the review!
> Best regards,
> Josua Dietze
