Exclusive: Qualcomm retracts DMCA takedown request and apologises to those involved

Updated 08/07.

On Thursday night, we reported on a DMCA takedown request issued by Qualcomm via Cyveilance to over 100 GitHub repositories over alleged copyright infringement. This morning, Qualcomm has responded to our requests for further information by responding with a retraction, as well as an apology to project maintainers affected by the takedown notice.

A Qualcomm representative spoke to Ausdroid about the takedown and said :

Recently Qualcomm issued a number of DMCA take-down requests for files posted to GitHub containing Qualcomm Confidential markings. Those requests were identified on the GitHub website at https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014-07-02-Qualcomm.md.

Since issuing these requests, we have been advised that at least one of these files may, in fact, not be Qualcomm Confidential. At this time, Qualcomm is retracting all of those DMCA take-down requests, and will be either reviewing such files further for possible approval for posting, or reaching out collaboratively to the project maintainers for assistance in addressing any remaining concerns. To those project maintainers who received these DMCA notices, we apologize for the approach taken.

While at this stage the repositories taken down on Thursday remain offline, it’s more due to a timing issue than anything else. The US is currently celebrating the July 4th, Independence day long weekend, making for poor timing to reverse the takedown action. We expect the takedown reversal to go into effect as soon as GitHub staff return from the July 4th holiday weekend.

We have spoken to a project maintainer who was affected by the takedown who advised that he is happy with the current outcome, and is looking forward to continuing development.

This is the best possible outcome that developers could hope for, with an apology received from Qualcomm for the takedown. The reversal isn’t quite in effect as yet, and we have contacted GitHub for further comment on when project maintainers can expect to gain access to their code again. We will be watching the repositories affected and update this story when it’s complete.

Update :
It appears that the GitHub repos are back up after the takedown was rescinded over the weekend. This includes the SonyXperiaDev, Qualcomm and CyanogenMod repos. CyanogenMod developer Brin Taylor has also renabled nightly builds for the Sony Xperia SP.