Plurk may sue Microsoft over Juku code
Microsoft Corp. may still face a lawsuit after apologizing for the theft of software code used in MSN China's microblog service, Juku, from rival Plurk, a popular provider from Canada.
"We are definitely looking at all possibilities on how to move forward in response to Microsoft's recent statement," Plurk co-founder Alvin Woon said Wednesday. A "lawsuit is definitely one of the many options we have considered and will continue to look closely to," he added. Plurk fired off a blog posting early this week alleging as much as 80 per cent of Juku's code base was stolen from Plurk.
Microsoft apologized Tuesday, saying an outside company hired to develop Juku copied a portion of the code from Plurk. The statement from the world's largest software vendor is at odds with one from MSN China early this month defending Juku as "a local innovation developed by MSN China ... based on Windows Live Messenger networks." The MSN China statement was a response to Chinese bloggers who early on called Juku a pirated version of Plurk.
