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So someone "stole" your idea

kent.io

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Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#11

Post by tobyjsullivan »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #3

This is a pet peeve of mine. When someone talks about having their idea stolen, it really bothers me. It especially bothers me if they tell me "now don't steal my idea, but..." I don't want your idea. I have too many of my own. Here, take some of mine. Most likely, I'll think your idea is shit anyway, because almost all ideas are shit when they are just an idea. For an idea to have value it needs to be backed by some…

I seem to get a new great idea every time I drink a beer. That's what I want to tell friends every time they come to me with a "great idea" I should implement (as business partners, of course).

That said, I still love hearing people's ideas. Just don't expect me to act on it.

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#12

Post by mpeg »

There is a Japanese animation from 2009 called Eden of the East, in which the main character funds a software startup that has a product which is very similar to that: take pictures on your phone and tap onto a network of users to identify objects in the picture, while at the same time training its AI capabilities based on the responses people give

I'm not really trying to make any particular point, it's a pretty clever series that touches on japanese social issues though. And I guess I'm agreeing with the OP in that ideas can come from anywhere.

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#13

Post by sergiotapia »

Or there are cases when ideas are actually stolen. :P

My brother and I created a very popular website a couple of years ago called Oracle of Legends. It was a League of Legends fansite with a LOT of features that are now copied elsewhere.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120509003942/http://www.oracle...

Loking.net didn't have the skin viewer it now has. They saw our skin viewer (granted it wasn't "ours") and built one themselves.

Ultimately a large team funded by ZAM Network's limitless supply of money won over two guys in South America with limited time and money.

My brother and I are now a powerhouse though, and we're building a new website for a new game we enjoy playing. THIS time, I don't care if the competition has more money, we'll win through sheer excellence and localization (something large websites from ZAM don't have).

It was a great experience for me and it landed me a lot of contracting work. :)

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#15

Post by michalu »

Years ago I heard so many people say they had an idea for Youtube before Youtube ... and some of these people can't even code. It's my vice that I'm not proud of, but whenever I heard it I felt like slapping that person.

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#16

Post by samsquire »

Ideas cannot be stolen - it does not disappear once it has been appropriated. Ideas can however be misattributed; ie, if someone takes credit for what they knowingly did not invent. Ideas can be formulated independently. Some ideas are so obvious you think you already had them (but this might just be confirmation bias/memory bias.)

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#18

Post by mbrzuzy »

A big part of the success of a project is the marketing and the names behind it. Someone linked me to Jelly a few days ago and I brushed it off not thinking it was that great of an idea. Then today I saw a post title "Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Explains The Surprising Goal Of His New Company" and thought, "oh Twitter Co-Founder? Maybe I should take a second look at this app".

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#19

Post by snarfy »

onion2k wrote: post #5

The complaint that "someone stole my idea" assumes that ideas are unique to the person who has them first. They're not - most ideas are a more or less obvious evolution of an existing product, and many people come up the same things completely independent of each other. Most of the time the complaint is really "someone implemented the thing I wasn't ever going to get around to doing and now I'm jealous."

The idea exists outside of your knowledge of it. It is not something you own, therefore cannot be stolen from you. You can own a table, but the idea of a table, something flat with legs that stuff can be placed on, exists without you. This is an old idea, going back to Plato.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms

Re: So someone "stole" your idea

#20

Post by singold »

It happened to me (more than once... ugh) that some "cool idea" gets implemented by someone else.

I really never feel they "stole my idea", for me it is more like a validation that my ideas don't suck that much :P

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