GitHub Committed Unlawful Business Practices: The Details

VIII. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF

COUNT 7 UNFAIR COMPETITION Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §§ 17200, et seq.; and Common Law (Against All Defendants)

275. Plaintiffs and the Class hereby repeat and incorporate by reference each preceding and succeeding paragraph as though fully set forth herein.

276. Defendants have engaged in unlawful business practices, including:

a. Violations of Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s rights under the DMCA;

b. Violations of Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s rights under the open-source licenses their Licensed Materials was published subject to;

c. Tortious interference in Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s prospective economic advantage with users of their code;

d. Failing to attribute Codex and Copilot’s Output as originating Plaintffs and the Class rather than from Copilot, GitHub, and/or OpenAI;

The details of the unlawful business practices are set forth herein.

277. The unlawful business practices described herein violate California Business and Professions Code section 17200 et seq. because that conduct is otherwise unlawful including under the DMCA.

278. The unlawful business practices described herein likewise violate California Business and Professions Code section 17200 et seq. because it is unfair because they are immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous or injurious to consumers because, among other reasons, Defendants pass off Codex and Copilot’s output without proper attribution as required by the licenses Plaintiffs’ and Class members’ code was published subject to.

279. The unlawful business practices described herein likewise violate California Business and Professions Code section 17200 et seq. as fraudulent because consumers are likely to be deceived because, among other reasons, Defendants cause Codex and Copilot’s output to be emitted without the proper licensing and attribution required by the licenses Plaintiffs and Class members publish their material subject to.

280. The unlawful business practices described herein violate the common law because Plaintiffs and Class members invested substantial time, skill and money in developing the Licensed Materials. Defendants misappropriated and used Plaintiffs and Class members’ Licensed materials without authorization or consent in order to, inter alia, train and develop Codex and Copilot.

281. Plaintiffs and the Class have suffered economic injury as a result of Defendants’ conduct. Specifically, there are economic benefits to the creation of open-source works such as generating market share for programs, increasing national or international reputation by incubating open-source projects, and deriving value from improvements to software based on suggestions by end-users.

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This court case 4:22-cv-06823-JST retrieved on August 26, 2023, from Storage Courtlistener is part of the public domain. The court-created documents are works of the federal government, and under copyright law, are automatically placed in the public domain and may be shared without legal restriction.