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Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

smartcar.com

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Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#151

Post by ethbro »

keithwhor wrote: post #114

Smartcar has raised $12M in financing from A16Z and NEA. The difference between $12M and $55M is a single financing stage. What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking. This is great PR for Smartcar all things considered, and I actually think has a fantastic silver lining:…

> What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking.

If a remote team is writing your API documentation by copying and pasting, then what is the actual implementation team building from?

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#152

Post by Gpetrium »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #44

That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course. And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being "stealth" and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market. On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more…

>The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn't.

I have to disagree with you emphasizing this point. If someone/entity manages to get your idea or code, they may be able to sell the solution at a fraction of the cost since their R&D was lower than yours. When the entity is 10x+ your size, they can also afford to gather the resources that increase their odds of success (e.g. marketing specialists, engineers,etc) at a rate which you can't compete. By then, you may have spent 2-3 years creating a business that is destroyed by an external entity acting in bad faith.

These things happen quite often.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#153

Post by ceejayoz »

matz1 wrote: post #98
gnicholas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but neither of them was illegally copying aspects of the others' business. Business models are not protectable.

illegal or not is for the court to decide.

Deciding it on your own before the court battle might save you millions of dollars of your own invested money.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#154

Post by PunchTornado »

huhtenberg wrote: post #133

> We created a standard API for cars. What do they mean by "standard" here if they object to this API being copied? The very goal of API standardization is to have a common interface for TWO parts to talk to each other in a consistent manner. An API that through whatever means allows for only one specific backend doesn't really qualify for being a "standard". > How Otonomo is illegally cloning our product So am I to…

Exactly, I don't understand what is their objection.

Since when copying some API docs is illegal? We don't even know yet if API are copyrightable, right?

Ever since Facebook copied snapchat's features like it was nothing it became clear for everyone that the best clone will win. You have a product? Expect a clone of it.

To me this post is just "they stole my idea" whining.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#155

Post by ceejayoz »

PunchTornado wrote: post #140
yingw787 wrote: post #34

Holy crap. The only way forward for Bessemer et al. VCs is to immediately withdraw their funding for this “company” and cut all ties in order to prove that they had no forewarning that this is how their money was being used. There are so few actors this visibly bad that if they didn’t do anything they would become “that guy” everybody avoids, in both the deals and funding space, when orgs do their due diligence. So t…

Can someone explain me what illegality did they do? Is it illegal to just copy some docs from somewhere on the web? are APIs copyrightable?

In the US, whether APIs are copyrightable is a question being currently litigated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google....

The latest decision in that saga is that yes, they can be. Whether that holds up in the Supreme Court is an open question. Most of us hope it doesn't, I suspect.

Copying documentation is definitely a copyright violation. Similar situation exists with recipes - a list of ingredients can't be copyrighted, but the wording of the steps can be. You have to at least put it in your own words.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#156

Post by jacquesm »

gnicholas wrote: post #141
jacquesm wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sell a SaaS reading product and don't care what my customers are using it to read, or whether their own websites our products contain any infringing content. What they are using your product for might very well turn into 'aiding and abetting', make sure your TOS is up to snuff and that you have it checked over by a lawyer to verify that if your customers do something illegal with your service you don't end up bei…

I'm not sure I follow (and I'm a lawyer). If someone uses my chrome extension to research how to rob a bank, and then they go do it, what is the legal theory that puts me at risk? Is Google at risk because they're using chrome? Or the computer manufacturer? Napster is one end of the spectrum, but I'm not sure how anything short of that is a legal risk. Are there cases or legal theories I'm unaware of?

There is a lot under 'SaaS' that you could use to further illegal schemes that do not fall under 'chrome extensions'.

Off the top of my head: anything payment related and two sided market places (money laundering, false binning), anything that allows large volumes of data to be moved around (copyright violation, child pornography, exfiltration of data from corporate networks), proxy services and spider services (DOS attacks, harassment, TOS circumvention and copyright violation) etc.

So nothing that would require legal theories, just the usual abuse of service.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#157

Post by huhtenberg »

PunchTornado wrote: post #154
huhtenberg wrote: post #133

> We created a standard API for cars. What do they mean by "standard" here if they object to this API being copied? The very goal of API standardization is to have a common interface for TWO parts to talk to each other in a consistent manner. An API that through whatever means allows for only one specific backend doesn't really qualify for being a "standard". > How Otonomo is illegally cloning our product So am I to…

Exactly, I don't understand what is their objection. Since when copying some API docs is illegal? We don't even know yet if API are copyrightable, right? Ever since Facebook copied snapchat's features like it was nothing it became clear for everyone that the best clone will win. You have a product? Expect a clone of it. To me this post is just "they stole my idea" whining.

No, verbatim copying of the docs, API or not, is obviously not right. However if they are claiming to aim for API standardization, the specs should be in public domain from the start.

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#159

Post by ignoranceprior »

localhostdotdev wrote: post #115

not sure how to formulate it but wouldn't a great execution be very hard to reproduce? looks like it's copying the external API. also looking at the other company documentation, it's different from the screenshots: https://docs.otonomo.io/docs/getting-started (archive.org history is quite limited so may have been scrubbed) edit: yes those "screenshots" are very disingenuous: https://smartcar.com/docs/api#introduction

Actually, many of the otonomo docs were saved to web.archive.org, last week:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://docs.otonomo.io/docs/*

And many were saved to archive.fo today:

https://archive.fo/docs.otonomo.io

The screenshots look accurate to me, what discrepancies do you see?

Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product

#160

Post by stcredzero »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #44

That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course. And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being "stealth" and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market. On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more…

There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.

The Chinese also do this. (As in, the government seems to encourage it outright.) The culture and language barrier do make for an effective moat. It usually takes significant effort and even some cultural change for a company to get its legs for international operation.

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