A small social-networking software company has filed suit against Google, claiming that much of the source code behind orkut.com, the search engine's popular social service, was stolen by a former engineer.
In its lawsuit, Affinity Engines, based in Palo Alto, California, said engineer Orkut Buyukkokten illegally took the code that he had written for the company -- which he co-founded -- with him when he joined Google. Affinity Engines also claimed that Buyukkokten promised Affinity Engines that he wouldn't develop a competing social-network service for Google. Affinity Engines, which filed the claim on May 25 in Santa Clara Superior Court, is seeking unspecified damages and royalties.
In addition to nearly identical text found in similar features in orkut.com and Affinity Engine's social-networking products, the suit cited several identical software problems in each company's service.
"In its initial investigation, AEI (Affinity Engines) uncovered a total of nine unique software bugs ... in AEI's inCircle product that were also present in orkut.com," according to the lawsuit. "The presence of these bugs in both products is highly indicative of a common source code.... orkut.com contains software and source code copied, developed or derived from AEI's inCircle software or source code."
After graduating from Stanford in 2001, Buyukkokten and fellow graduate Tyler Ziemann built a social-networking service called Club Nexus, which they sold to Stanford for use by the university's undergraduates, according to the lawsuit. Club Nexus was a success, and Buyukkokten and Ziemann subsequently decided to form Affinity Engines and design a product for the Stanford Alumni Association called inCircle.
As a developer of social-networking software for university students and alumni, Affinity Engines was among the first players in what has become a very crowded field. Today, social-networking services like Friendster, Tribe, LinkedIn and orkut attract millions of users by giving them a way to easily connect to friends and friends' networks of friends.
Meanwhile, for Google, the suit comes at an awkward time. The company is currently in the process of an initial public offering, which is expected to be one of the biggest ever. But Affinity Engines isn't the only company suing Google. Among others, the company faces a patent-infringement suit from Overture regarding auctioning placement in search-engine results.
For its part, Google shrugged off Affinity Engines' allegations.
"Affinity Engines has not provided any evidence to Google that their source code was used in the development of orkut.com," wrote David Krane, the company's director of corporate communications, in a statement to Wired News. "We have repeatedly offered to allow a neutral expert to compare the codes in the two programs and evaluate Affinity's claims, but Affinity has rejected that offer. We have investigated the claims ... thoroughly and concluded that the allegations are without merit."
The origins of the orkut code dispute arose, the lawsuit claimed, when Buyukkokten, a Turkish citizen, decided to take a job with Google to solve his visa problems. He continued to work on inCircle, however, and signed agreements in 2002 and 2003 stating that any social-networking technology he created belonged to Affinity Engines, the company said.
But, the suit alleged, Google soon became interested in owning a social-networking service. When its $30 million offer to buy Friendster was spurned, it turned to Buyukkokten.
"In July 2003, based on oral statements and written assurances from ... Buyukkokten, AEI was led to believe that Buyukkokten was not involved in any software development efforts related to social networking at Google," the company claimed in the lawsuit. "Buyukkokten copied and otherwise used inCircle source code still in his possession," Affinity Engines claims. "At no time during his communications with AEI prior to Jan. 22, 2004, did Buyukkokten reveal that he was developing ... orkut.com."
The suit also provided anecdotal detail about why it believes Buyukkokten broke his agreement. On Jan. 24, Google threw a launch party for orkut.com. As the party was going on, Ziemann, who didn't know about the new site, called Buyukkokten on his cell phone. "Apparently assuming that Ziemann had just learned of the website, Buyukkokten's first comment to Ziemann was, 'I hope you aren't mad at me,' to which Ziemann replied, 'Why would I be mad at you?'" the lawsuit said.
Affinity Engines chief executive Brian Samuels said that just days later, his company let Google know there was a problem. After several months of little or no relief from Google, Affinity Engines decided to file its suit. But it decided to lay low in hopes that it wouldn't "inflame Google," said Samuels.
Regardless, Affinity Engines said in the filing that it hopes for compensatory and punitive damages from Google, as well as royalties for revenue earned by orkut. It argued that Google's access to the intellectual property Buyukkokten brought from Affinity Engines helped get orkut quickly and unfairly to market.
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