Synaptics sends cease-and-desist order to creator of open-source DisplayLink driver, dares him to publicize its threats

A hobbyist building on open-source driver for DisplayLink hardware received a cease-and-desist from Synaptics, resulting in a lengthy written argument and a threat to sue from the company. According to Phoronix, the Vino driver was “clean-room reverse-engineered” and partly developed using AI and written in Rust. However, even though the person behind the open-source driver, Mike Lothian, did not break the copyright of the code behind the driver, Synaptics argued that his work violates its patent on the DisplayLink technology.

The story began in July 2026, when Lothian reached out to Łukasz Spintzyk, a software engineer working at Synaptics, to help solve a few bugs he’s been encountering. However, Michal Lukaszek, the Strategic Engineering Partnerships Lead at the company, replied a couple of weeks later, saying that the company is concerned that Lothian is attempting to implement the DisplayLink protocol itself, which is a violation of its patents. …