1. This is promissory estoppel for contracts. There are lots of types of estoppel, and not all are related at all to what this post is talking about.
2. This post misses a super important requirement for the examples it gives, which is that you have to detrimentally rely on the promise. Put another way - you have to have been injured (monetarily) by the promise to recover.
Usually this means you did something in response to the promise that cost money and can't be undone easily.
Being upset at pizza type would not cut it :)
3. The house example is wrong for another reason - promises/contracts to buy/sell houses must be in writing and signed to be enforceable (at least in the US). This is known as the statute of frauds. If i promise you verbally to sell you a house, and later do not, it will generally not be enforced.
(You may be able to recover something for detrimental reliance, but you will not be able to force me to sell you the house based on a verbal promise)
Most states also apply this to certain other types of purchases/etc.
Judicial estoppel - Being barred taking positions directly the opposite of ones you've taken in litigation before (and benefited from). IE you can't say "we didn't do it" in a civil lawsuit, and then say "we did do it" in a bankruptcy proceeding.
Estoppel by deed - In real estate, f i give you a deed to a house, i can't later turn around and claim it wasn't a valid deed.
Prosecution history estoppel - in patents, if i disclaim something in a proceeding with the PTO to get a patent, i can't later claim infringement for the thing i disclaimed.
IE if the USPTO gives me a prior art reference and says it overlaps, I can say "my patent doesn't cover that" and disclaim rights to the part they think overlaps. I can't later sue someone over that overlap.
Relatedly -- if we could just inject the term "bailment" into all of our discussions about data and privacy we could really get somewhere.
Kind of seems like the later.
Original comment:
I was prepared for a story time about a legal issue Ente is facing, and since they don’t mention one I now have more questions than I started with.
Are they the recipient of an estoppel order? In the process of issuing them? Are there implications we should hear about but don’t? Or is this all just for fun, like “it was lunch and learn legalese day” at HQ?
I’m not familiar with this company, but seeing as how they provide E2E encrypted photo backups at a time where law enforcement is globally maneuvering to end such things has me wondering if maybe something more happening. Which saddens me since I’m now interested in the product…
Edit 1: rereading this comment I feel like it’s a bit cynical, so i removed some speculative remarks. Strange topic to get your product mentioned on the HN front page, but I suppose it worked!
> It was legal day today at ente
I took this to mean that they regularly meet with their legal team, not for a specific purpose, but just to touch base and catch up on anything that may useful to have council's eyes review (read: informal meeting with legal team). Estoppel could have come up any number of ways, talking about contracts and their enforcement, someone asked a question that naturally veered into that territory, etc.
Someone promised or mentioned something that someone acted upon, and now it has changed.
