Slight tangent but can you “copyright” a REST API or UI? Sure, the endpoints and look can be copied but the secret is the implementation, no?
Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
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Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#122You blew it. By posting this article and getting to the top of Hackernews you may have alerted their attention and they may rapidly change everything to not seem like copyright infringement. Then you might have weak or no claims.
Ah just the uplifting words op needed for the battle ahead.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#123In some ways it reminds one of the Google/Oracle API thing -- most of us didn't _want_ the API itself (the method signatures or 'shapes') to be copyrightable or otherwise protectable as IP (as the law seemed to say it _wasn't_ until the Google/Oracle case).
However, copying the _docs_ like that is a clear copyright violation, always has been, still is, not really a legal gray area, I don't know what the heck Otonomo was thinking, and I hope they get their hat handed to them.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you do it? We have a team of people that exhaustively search for players in the same space. The 'Google on various phrases' is more or less the gist of it, the more unique the better. It's not an automated process so fairly time consuming. > Are you checking for your customers our on your customers? We do not check on our customers, we check for our customers. And usually pre-investment. > If the latter, why…
Thanks for clarifying! I'm still confused as to why a vendor would check on a customer or care if they're infringing. 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.
> 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 being on the hook.
As for the second, that might be a good hint that your customer is not above-board and will bear closer watching.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#125A lot of good advice on here. Let me add another point, maybe just consider negotiating an acquisition. Yes, it does kind of suck they stole your idea. But the fact that they have $55 million in funding, probably means they're willing to buy you out for a couple million. One, just to avoid any legal issues. Two, because you've already done a lot of work on the problem. Maybe it's worth fighting. But maybe it's also w…
If they go down this route, SmartCar should ask for at least their post-money valuation based on their last $10M raise back in March 2018[1], not just a "couple of million".
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/smartcar#section-ove...
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#126That 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…
> Since the ability to get a foreign company (in this case Israeli) to do anything is limited
Doesn’t hurt to have a court order in place. Chances are they’ll settle for a material fraction of the cash you know they have.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_Internet
Ah good old Rocket Internet. Used to deal quite a lot with them back in the days. For all the ethically ambiguous things they do, I still remember fondly their creative ways of using AdTech.
Missing morals seems like a critical enabling technology of creative AdTech.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bessemer & Co. would not spend this kind of money without doing DD to the point where their competitive review would have snagged the OP's efforts. So most likely they know.
Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree. Bessemer & Co. probably don't know that the docs are literally being copied though.
>> Bessemer & Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar's API. I'm not sure there's anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree.
Anyone considering that should be aware that Oracle vs Google is still not finished.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#129Earlier 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.
Technically, yes. But practically, in cases so blatantly obvious it is fine to draw your own conclusion.
In one court case - where a company I had a majority stake in was the plaintiff - the defendant basically had to admit that they copied the code and content of our website. Their defense: 'we did not copy it from them, we copied it from someone else' (without specifying what the 'someone else' was). Needless to say that did not end well, we were surprised they actually went to court but since this was in a country where the loser pays the court costs of the winner that did not overly bother me.
Re: Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product
#130You may not hear anything right away, but someone who works for (or was outsourced by) Otonomo is currently having a Very Bad Day.
Otonomo management will have an even worse day when they realize that they are not indemnified just because someone works for them. They will likely have to kiss a substantial portion of that money goodbye as compensation in whatever settlement will be reached. Their lawyers will not be able to win this one from what I've read and seen so far so the best they will be able to achieve is to settle before it gets to cou…
It would be (morbidly? Sadochistically? I lack the term) interesting to watch how many people jump ship in a situation like this.