Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by scient » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #70

scient wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its OAuth documentation - its a very well described standard protocol. Most of the OAuth documentation looks and reads exactly like this. The only "smoking gun" is the "random" value used for the state parameter, which seems to be copied over - and developers copy other products/sites documentation ALL THE TIME. While there is substance in the post that some other company is building the same product, saying that its…

That smoking gun is smoking plenty. That and the typos are the kind of proof that are a godsend during a lawsuit when you're on the offense and a really really bad day when you're on the defense.

And what would the lawsuit be based on? Stealing documentation for how OAuth 2.0 works?

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

#282

Post by iamleppert » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

Forgive me, but all I really see that’s ripped of are...some API docs?

You can tell they copied them but this is likely the work of a single lazy employee rather than indicative of an entire company.

Consider that the value of a company is more than API documentation. It’s the customers, the business relationships, and the employees. The actual tech is last in the things that are valuable.

If you want to survive in this industry you need to understand that eventually someone is going to copy your product. They might even do it better than you. Unless you can prove fraud, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no crime in copying someone's public API and offering an identical service; people do it all the time.

Instead of worrying about your competitor and some lazy employee they hired there, worry about your own product, customers, business. Start planning your next feature or next way you’re going to WOW your customers. That’s your real job.

Now get to it!

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

#283

Post by tjungblut » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #259

In general, you can't copyright a "working part". That's why there are 3rd party auto parts. That's pretty much true in the software area too, although Google and Oracle are over- litigating that issue. The idea here probably isn't patentable. "Locate and unlock a car's doors remotely" is not exactly original. Just rewording the docs is cheezy. The other party should have done a full rewrite.

> The idea here probably isn't patentable. "Locate and unlock a car's doors remotely" is not exactly original.

I don't want to be disrespectful and also don't want to condone somebody ripping off API docs. But if the whole product is nine pretty simple and straightforward RESTful API endpoints with OAuth2 integration(eg. [1]), then I have a hard time to understand why there are not hundreds of other companies doing the same thing. Where is the value here, is it the integration with car manufacturers?

[1] https://smartcar.com/docs/api#get-basic-vehicle-info

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

#284

Post by MikeTheGreat » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

alexmlamb2 wrote: post #260

jstarfish wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a nation, not a race. Race itself is a social construct. Nice try though!

"Race itself is a social construct." What do people mean by this exactly? I've heard some people make the case that the exact boundaries between ethnic groups can be socially constructed, which makes sense to me (like how one draws a hard line between two groups which have some admixture). But the idea that ethnicities have nothing to do with biology and is a purely social phenomenon sounds like a lay-person's misund…

I'm still figuring this out myself, but I think that people are talking about race in at least two different ways:

1) Race from a biological/chemical perspective. Stuff like 'DNA determines race' goes here.

2) Race from the perspective of all the things that happens to a person because they belong to a particular race (as defined in 1). Apparently, being black and driving in America means it's more likely that you'll be pulled over by the cops, more likely that they'll assume you're a drug dealer, etc, etc. I wouldn't know because I'm not black, and every time I was pulled over by the cops I was clearly at fault. Differences like these are discussed under the umbrella of 'race'.

The key is that in the second case there's nothing from biology / chemistry / science that says that black people should get pulled over more. That's just how things are in America now - it's a "social construct".

Again, I'm not an expert, but I think that's what people mean by 'race is a social construct'

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

#285

Post by JamesBarney » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

keithwhor wrote: post #254

sahaskatta wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I'm the CEO of Smartcar. While I can't go into exact details, I can say from what we know so far: this occurred out of their main headquarters.

Can you clarify? "Out of" can mean either "outside of" or "within" weirdly enough.

I think in this context it means within.

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

#286

Post by joshfraser » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors.

I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that they wanted $5,000 for, they looked oddly familiar. A quick diff verified my suspicions. They had copy-pasted from one of our competitors and then search-replaced the company name.

When I called them out on it, they said it was common practice and not to worry. I found a new law firm and they never bothered to try and collect on that invoice.

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

#287

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

joemi wrote: post #267

ceejayoz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's cloning of Snapchat's features is legal. If they'd copied Snapchat's "how to use " documentation verbatim, typos and all, that'd have been a copyright violation.

Did you look at the linked article? It's not verbatim. It's clear that it was heavily based on Smartcar's docs, but it's most certainly not verbatim.

Did you? There's no way they got the same random state and client UUID via chance. That's a direct copy/paste. So are various tables they provided screenshots of.

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

#288

Post by scient » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

whoisjuan wrote: post #198

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. They didn't steal the docs (not only the docs). They stole the whole public facing architecture as evidenced by the fact that they are using in some instances the exact same API resources names and method names.

And you have no idea what you are talking about. By that logic every company thats an OAuth 2.0 provider ripped off their "whole public facing architecture". Or rather, Smartcar ripped off someone elses'.

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

#289

Post by joetribiani » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

prostanac wrote: post #158

bytecut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://docs.otonomo.io/docs/obtain-consent-from-a-driver

it seems like they took it down.

It is still here: http://otonomo-docs.readme.io/docs

(found on another internal forums/board) Save a copy maybe?

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

#290

Post by rhegart » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

hummel wrote: post #241

I have solid evidence that some EV startups that raised billions like Faraday Future are built on our EV-technology and self-driving stack that we built during 2007-2012. Our project died in 2014 due to lack of support and funding on Europe, while our "Chinese partners" started raising mega large rounds literally copying everything from us, from business plan to technology. You can also see an overnight quality jump…

In a previous thread about China ripping of IP and blatantly sabotaging others illegally, many commentators supported them saying it’s better for the world. The fact that people are this naive scares me. I’m so sorry this happened, I am glad more light is being shined in unfair practices like this.