Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy • Hacker News Board

Re: Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

#131

Post by KirinDave » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #130

KirinDave wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's you and others who have to torture these definitions to begin using a term like "design theft," which very clearly doesn't involve depriving the owner of property or carrying anything away, and is obviously just copying instead. So you're saying if I rob your bank account it's not theft because it's not a physical good. Okay. > Amazon is threatening to turn Allbirds' unique design into an entire category, and…

> So you're saying if I rob your bank account it's not theft because it's not a physical good. Okay. It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money. You're not copying it. You're literally taking it away. Hence it's theft. I know you're more than intelligent enough to understand this concept if you try. > I am convinced you're misrepresenting…

> It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money

But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substantially impacting the value of the currencily). So me robbing your bank account isn't immoral, by your logic.

It seems to me like there is a hole in your metaphorical boat here if it allows such an obviously immoral action to be considered.

At some point you need to admit that reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property or depriving them of a livelihood in some fashion is some sort of theft. Otherwise you're just begging people to produce a series of trivial and obvious examples showing these kinds of obvious contradictions.

> Okay sure, but that doesn't change anything about my argument. Allbirds' look is being commoditized, and perhaps in the future there will be an entire category of minimally-branded wool shoes, just like today we have entire categories of similar-looking shoes like wingtips.

There already is this market. Tom's did it before and there are plenty of other examples. Amazon's specifically copying one vendor and then using their horizontal integration to hide the fact that Allbirds even exists.

That's not a commoditized good no matter how much you want to try and repeat the phrase.

Re: Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

#132

Post by csallen » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 5:37 AM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #131

csallen wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you're saying if I rob your bank account it's not theft because it's not a physical good. Okay. It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money. You're not copying it. You're literally taking it away. Hence it's theft. I know you're more than intelligent enough to understand this concept if you try. > I am convinced you're misrepresenting…

> It's not about the physicality of the good. It's about it being rivalrous. If you take my money, I no longer have my money But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substa…

> But that's not true in the case of a bank account. Its insured. And often times you dont even get to see that the bank lost money, because of how banks are structured internally. And even if the bank can't insure it's the government can just print more money (and frequently does, without substantially impacting the value of the currencily). So me robbing your bank account isn't immoral, by your logic.

The fact that my money gets replaced by someone who has agreed to do so (the bank, the insurer, whoever) doesn't mean it wasn't stolen. The very fact that someone had to reimburse or replace it is proof that it was stolen. That reimbursement couldn't happen otherwise.

Perhaps you could argue that it was stolen from the bank and not from me, sure. But it was still stolen.

Compare to copying. If you share an idea or reveal a shoe design, and then I copy you, have you been deprived of that idea or design? No. It's still in your possession, which it never left, not even for a moment. Nobody needs to reimburse you by giving you another copy of that idea to replace the one you lost, because you never lost it.

> At some point you need to admit that reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property or depriving them of a livelihood in some fashion is some sort of theft.

Reducing the potential value of someone else's work or property is literally the very essence of competition in a capitalistic system lol.

And this is what I predicted your argument would boil down to in the very end. You can't build a case that there was any actual theft of an idea. The best you can do is argue that original worker should be entitled to an exclusive right to profit from that idea. That concept has a name, and it's called copyright, not theft.

> Otherwise you're just begging people to produce a series of trivial and obvious examples showing these kinds of obvious contradictions.

You haven't shown any contradictions. For some reason you just aren't grokking the concept of rivalrous vs nonrivalrous goods.

Re: Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

#133

Post by LMo » Sat, Nov 23, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #104

mipmap04 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about sodas like Dr. Pepper vs. Dr. Thunder? Do you think producing Dr. Thunder is ethically questionable from a business standpoint?

Or Oreo and Hydrox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrox

Thanks for posting; Hydrox becomes the imitator...

Re: Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

#134

Post by CalChris » Sun, Nov 24, 2019, 5:22 AM UTC

quotz wrote: post #106

CalChris wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AllBirds does have design patents. https://patents.justia.com/assignee/allbirds-inc

One cant patent design, only functionality. Thats why theres so much branding in the fashion industry

There are three kinds of patents: utility, design and patent [1]. For example, the Apple Samsung lawsuit was over a design patent [2]. Design patents are good for 14 year.

[1] https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/patents/types-o...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electron....

Re: Allbirds CEO on Amazon's copycat strategy

#135

Post by tootie » Mon, Nov 25, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

dinisp89 wrote: post #15

Allbirds shoes look very very cheap. I stopped into their NYC store downtown twice. Each time I noticed a ton of glue that had seeped onto the wool when they glued the fabric on. I thought the first time it was a one-off issue. The pattern continues. Allbirds really needs to step up their quality. If you look at the product quality of Merrel, Danner, US Made Red Wing Shoes, it's night and day! I would never buy an Al…

I had a pair of Allbirds and they were super comfy and breathable but the soles were dangerously bad. Walking around in slushy weather they were like ice skates causing me to slip and fall more than once. I know they're not winter boots but even a pair of regular sneakers were 100x better.