There are so many legal issues in Episode 15 that it’s hard to know where to begin, so I’m going to start at the end: porn.  Pied Piper is competing against nemesis Endframe for a $15 million contract from the online porn company Intersite.  If Pied Piper wins the contract it will allow Pied Piper to stay afloat and avoid being absorbed and obliterated by Endframe.
Continue Reading Other Peoples’ (Adult) Content (Episode 15)

Previously we’ve discussed Hooli’s reverse engineering of Pied Piper’s technology and the threatened lawsuit for ownership of the technology.  In Episode 14, Pied Piper faces a new threat:  Endframe, a Pied Piper competitor, has also stolen Pied Piper’s technology, in collusion with VC firm Branscomb Ventures.  This started back in Episode 10, when the Pied Piper team pitched to Branscomb and were “brain raped.”  The team shared the intimate, technical details of Pied Piper’s middle-out technology before realizing what was happening.  Branscomb/Endframe then used the information Pied Piper revealed to create their competing product.  But was there anything Pied Piper could have done to protect itself?
Continue Reading “‘Say it ain’t so, bro!’” (Episode 14)

Last post I mused that had Richard taken certain steps in the first season of Silicon Valley, he might now have ammunition to use against Hooli’s lawsuit.  What am I talking about?  To very crudely recap what happened last season, Richard invented Pied Piper, a music copyright search service that hid within it amazing lossless compression technology.  Richard shared his software with two “brogrammers” at Hooli, who (being slightly smarter than they appeared) realize the importance of Richard’s compression technology and informed Gavin Belson (Hooli’s CEO).  After Richard refused to sell Pied Piper to Hooli, Hooli reverse-engineered Pied Piper and used Pied Piper’s technology as the basis of Hooli’s competing product called Nucleus. 
Continue Reading VC’s running scared – Hooli is suing Pied Piper (Episodes 9 and 10) continued