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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

#521

Post by mrgordon »

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 German VC firm you refer to is Rocket Internet aka the Samyer Brothers. They cloned every startup they could find for a while.

https://thehustle.co/rocket-internet-oliver-samwer

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

#522

Post by da_chicken »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #422
da_chicken wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the perfect counter example here. Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player, but the generic term is basically 'iPod'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a smartphones or touchscreens, but the generic term for a touchscreen smartphone is basically 'iPhone'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a tablet, but the generic term is basically 'iPad'. Apple didn't invent high resolution displays fo…

This has to be a regional thing, similar to how in some areas of the American south, "Coke" is a generic term for all sodas. But at least in my area (Portland, OR), what you're saying is definitely not true. I've never heard someone use Apple trademarks as generic terms. The generic term people use for a touchscreen smartphone is...a smartphone. Likewise, a generic term for a tablet is "tablet". I've never heard some…

It doesn't really matter if it is a regional thing. The point is not that the name takes over. That's just a side effect that sometimes happens. The point is that the product that came second and copied the first now dominates the market.

How about the IBM PC? Plenty of home computers existed prior to the PC, but today 8086 code dominates at all levels of computing.

How about Google's search, or Google Maps? AltaVista and MapQuest came first.

You mention Nintendo and PlayStation, but Atari was before both of those!

How about Facebook instead of MySpace?

The point is that saying that the person who comes along and copies you will do it worse because they don't understand it is often wrong.

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

#523

Post by markdown »

duxup wrote: post #452
joshfraser wrote: post #286

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 t…

At the University of Nebraska they have an athletic director who used the same legal agreement from his past job to arrange a football game with the Zips. The game was cancelled due to lighting. But the contract supposedly copy and pasted from his old job at a costal school only addressed "tropical storm, hurricane and flood." It's amazing what people will or will not do when it comes to important legal matters.

> "tropical storm, hurricane and flood."

Always best to use "Act of God", which is a legally accepted (and often defined) term.

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

#524

Post by chirau »

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…

That German company was Rocket Internet. They IPO'd Jumia last week on US markets.

Love them, hate them, never underestimate them.

Whether you are creating, disrupting, stealing, copying or cheating... just be the best at it. There is reward for that.

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

#525

Post by adi18g »

It's obvious that someone read the SmartCar docs, and copied the oAuth2 flow. But it's not like SmartCar's API is unique. It's pretty standard flow. Correct me if I am wrong. Check this, https://www.oauth.com/ On custom schemes, check https://www.oauth.com/oauth2-servers/redirect-uris/redirect-...

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

#526

Post by intertextuality »

dmh2000 wrote: post #474
gepoch wrote: post #437

I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere so I thought I'd post it to see what you all think... IANAL, IMHO, etc. I searched for one of the unique tokens in the docs: https://www.google.com/search?q=0facda3319 That pulls up their SDK github repo: https://github.com/smartcar/node-sdk/blob/master/doc/readme.... Which is published with a standard MIT license: https://github.com/smartcar/node-sdk/blob/master/LICENSE.md Whic…

In Github terms of service, if you make a repo public, others are free to view and fork it, apparently even if you place a commercial license on it, or no license. The lawyers will have to figure out if that means copy, use or whatever. https://help.github.com/en/articles/licensing-a-repository

I believe this is a big problem with git or any of the current repo gui providers. A repository should not be able to be forked if it doesn't have a SPDIX license. Or at the very least users should be able to turn off forking ability in the repo settings.

It's usually not an issue but I have run into some small repositories that had no license, meaning I could -not- fork and modify for myself or a PR, legally. But this is not obvious at all unless you look for the license file or a manifest file.

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

#527

Post by Sabinus »

shard972 wrote: post #515
osrec wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, this is the bread and butter for a lot of law firms. Especially for simpler things like rental contracts and property conveyancing etc. It's got to be disrupted soon enough!

I wouldn't hold my breath on law being disrupted, they are quite happy the way they are thank you very much.

You don't need the permission of encumbants to disrupt their industry. You just take their customers.

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

#528

Post by joshfraser »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #467
joshfraser wrote: post #286

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 t…

Developer and former small business owner here. Your attorneys may have been using the same base template that was used to create your competitor's documentation. Lawyers reduce the need to copy/pasta code, just like developers do. If an attorney's game of 20 questions leads to a bunch of templates that were drawn up before they ever knew you, values are filled in for your specific use case, you're not getting ripped…

It wasn't from a template. The language was way too specific to the specific business. And the law firm didn't deny that they had copied it.

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

#529

Post by joshfraser »

iandanforth wrote: post #301
joshfraser wrote: post #286

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 t…

Sadly this is exactly what should be done in most contracts. (In a hypothetical alternate world where law worked more like OSS). Of course it was unethical for them to do it without telling you and trying to charge you $5k for it, but law would be a heck of a lot cheaper if openness and code re-use were the default.

And the best law firms understand that. Take Cooley's terms of use generator for example:

https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/terms-use/

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

#530

Post by jmb12686 »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #422
da_chicken wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the perfect counter example here. Apple wasn't the first company to make an MP3 player, but the generic term is basically 'iPod'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a smartphones or touchscreens, but the generic term for a touchscreen smartphone is basically 'iPhone'. Apple wasn't the first company to make a tablet, but the generic term is basically 'iPad'. Apple didn't invent high resolution displays fo…

This has to be a regional thing, similar to how in some areas of the American south, "Coke" is a generic term for all sodas. But at least in my area (Portland, OR), what you're saying is definitely not true. I've never heard someone use Apple trademarks as generic terms. The generic term people use for a touchscreen smartphone is...a smartphone. Likewise, a generic term for a tablet is "tablet". I've never heard some…

Where I grew up (borderline Midwest, generally associated with the South), it is common to ask “What kind of Coke would you like?” And an acceptable answer to said question could be “Mountain Dew”, “Dr Pepper”, or any competing soda brand. After I moved away from my hometown (though still in the general midwestern region) I found it fascinating how hyper local the nomenclature for soda can be (or rather “pop” or “coke” depending on where you live).
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