I don’t think the average person has much of a chance completely avoiding software or other products that might have patent, licensing, ©, and/or reverse engineering issues that can be hard, if possible, for them to detect. It’s a complicated space filled with more opinions than settled facts or laws, with patent trolls, patent systems & laws that may need reforms, changing definitions of fair use rights etc. Oracle sued Google over their use of Java code, and after years of fighting it out in the lower courts the Supreme court sided with Google last year. And the US Supreme court just denied Apple’s request to decide their legal battle with Qualcomm.
My guess, and it’s just that, is that Amazon likely feels it’s not worth the potential negative press with low odds of success if it went after Epubor. Amazon doesn’t want anyone [besides themselves] giving away or selling Kindle books, but if a customer has already bought a Kindle book, there’s no harm to Amazon if they convert it somehow. It’s not like they’re going to lose the sale of a 2nd copy, since no one buys a 2nd copy of a Kindle book they own. Now if you set up a site or used P2P to give away copies of several books, I’m sure they wouldn’t be happy.
When it comes to software itself, the visual design and the GUI layout can be copied, same as a web site, but AFAIK that’s usually done as part of a scam, e.g., to get people to install a fake [often Android] app for free that contains malware. Reverse engineering [decompiling] software files or using files without permission as-is that are part of someone else’s app is IMHO somewhat common. The purpose may be to see how something is done, to figure out how to bypass a software’s activation or DRM, or maybe reuse portions of the code themselves. Only the 2nd of those is easily detected.
I think many of the DVD / Blu-ray players created in China are a great example… For one thing, and it’s a relatively minor point, video DVD & Blu-ray specs have always been controlled by their respective consortiums, & never released publicly. To design a player that works with either requires paying a license fee & signing a contract or a little bit of reverse engineering. Decoding the video is done by open-source software designed to work with the specs, which are public, so no problems there, but the audio is Dolby or DTS, both of which are very much proprietary & ©, requiring a license or reverse engineering. I’ve seen nothing to indicate they license anything, while the PowerDVD site for example proudly displays official DVD, Blu-ray, Dolby, & DTS logos.
