Live data from Hacker News

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

smartcar.com

271–280 of 637 posts

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

#271
This is surprisingly and unfortunately common. I do technical DD for big tech companies and VCs in my areas of expertise -- databases, geospatial, and sensor analytics. Plagiarism, particularly of white papers and documentation, is ubiquitous. I've personally been plagiarized by famous unicorn startups that are now post-IPO. I never call any of these companies out but it is a poor startup strategy for two reasons:

First, someone like me flagging this has killed or crippled potential acquisitions by big tech companies. In most cases, the startup has no idea that the plagiarism was discovered but it follows their reputation. It is a giant red flag since it raises questions about the provenance of the rest of the IP. Plagiarism reduces your probability of a successful exit.

Second, in some cases, it puts you in the position of tacitly trying to execute someone else's technical vision that you may be lack the expertise to replicate. I've also seen this failure mode multiple times. Plagiarized documentation makes a promise that will be difficult or impossible for the startup to deliver on because they lack specialized expertise that the company they copied it from has. This is a form of self-sabotage since it puts the startup in the position of executing from a position of weakness in order to match the content they ripped off from some other startup, which leads to poor product and poor customer experience.

Copying abstract ideas is fine, there are many possible implementation variations, but blatantly ripping off other startups is a very low ROI strategy for startup success.

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

#272

Can you not use a DMCA and contact their hosting provider? One per offense. Also, if the docs are registered copyright, willfull infringement per offense is over $100k per instance. $50mil/$140k = 357.14 Thoughts?

No judge would agree that damages are anywhere close to 100k per instance.

It just isn't something a judge would ever agree to.

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

#273
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn't. I have to disagree with you emphasizing this point. If someone/entity manages to get your idea or code, they may be able to sell the solution at a fraction of the cost since their R&D was lower than yours. When the en…

I tend to agree with the original comment, particularly for products that are still evolving. We have a competitor who copies our features, but they don't know why we built the feature. The result is they end up copying the wrong stuff or tweaking the feature in a way that completely misses the point. But, I agree with you in that creating a feature isn't an advantage in and of itself. Rather, it is the domain expert…

Agree with generally not worrying about the competition — we were a little worried since a valley startup of ex-Big4 people cloned us 3 years ago, but they haven‘t managed to come far, despite a whopping 8MM seed round (we were bootstrapped).

This example however seems to play in a different league, the extent of ripoff here is absolutely staggering.

If I were OP, I‘d immediately call Daimler‘s PR department. After the whole dieselgate shitshow, none of the German automakers are out for the slightest bit of negative PR...

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/01/10/168588...

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people and companies who do this add no value to society. They are parasites.

What if they provide the product at a lower price?

Even then, they are still parasites with no ethics.

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

#275

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…

Or people trying to be too inclusive and forward thinking without thinking about the implications of what is being said. Race and ethnicity are so closely tied, that from a biological standpoint, it's almost pointless to try to separate them.

I made a comment about this previously in reply:

>This isn't really a good argument. Western people use lactose in a variety of ways such as a drink additive (tea), for cooking (cheese, cream-based sauces), and even consuming by the glass (good ol' fashion milk). However, there's a high prevalence of lactose intolerance in Asian countries. There are just some sensitivities, diseases, and reactions that are more prevalent in some ethnicities than others including lactose intolerance, sickle-cell anemia, and Tay-Sachs disease.[0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19420642

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

#277
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…

> self-driving stack that we built

what company was it that went out of business in 2014?

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

#278
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Just check out our docs: https://smartcar.com/docs/ Would love any feedback you may have!

The documentation only has a screenshot of the brands supported. Would be nice to just be able to lookup my car brand and make support in the docs instead of having to make an Auth flow first...

That's good feedback. We'll try to make things more clear!

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

#279
post #100

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…

This is pretty egregious, but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself. The other company still has the write all the backend code, and given their track record of just ripping stuff off, may not have the engineering chops to pull it off. In addition, as Smartcar continuously improves their product and API, the other company can only react to these changes. If I was the O…

The actual saying is "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Sorry, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people replace "sincerest" with "best", because it changes the point of the adage.

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

#280
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct copied text in Request Access Token section

I seem to have missed that, thanks for pointing it out! Then we arrive to the question: is a copyright claim over a few paragraphs of text worth the effort?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know if this kind of thing reaches trial at any point, but I wonder if discovery would turn up any sort of direct code copying or reverse engineering done by poached employees.

Perhaps the company even used decompiled code, it's not out of the realm of possibility that they simply directly stole the whole thing.

I'm not sure any of that is actually likely, but I think that the fact that some paragraphs are directly lifted is a massive red flag.

Post reply on HN