Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

smartcar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 637 posts

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

#291

Post by blotter_paper »

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…

>Companies have been known to talk about expensive and complicated features or options in order to get people trying to copy their success to waste time and money on something for which there is no actual demand.

Anyone know of a specific documented example of this? I'm not really doubting, just interested.

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

#292

Post by will_brown »

alexmlamb2 wrote: post #260
jstarfish wrote: post #191

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…

>What do people mean by this exactly?

Historically, “race” was a term invented to group/categorize people by language. From there it evolved into a reference of nationality. Most recently it has become a word to define an attempt to group people by physical characteristics.

So for example you associate race with ethnicity...the question is why? Ethnicity after all is a word to group people through nationality and culture, having nothing to do with physical characteristics...for example Irish is an ethnicity (in addition to just a nationality), but there are both black and white irish.

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

#293

Post by Animats »

tjungblut wrote: post #283
Animats wrote: post #259

In general, you can't copyright a "working part". That's why there are 3rd party auto parts. That's pretty much true in the software area too, although Google and Oracle are over- litigating that issue. The idea here probably isn't patentable. "Locate and unlock a car's doors remotely" is not exactly original. Just rewording the docs is cheezy. The other party should have done a full rewrite.

> The idea here probably isn't patentable. "Locate and unlock a car's doors remotely" is not exactly original. I don't want to be disrespectful and also don't want to condone somebody ripping off API docs. But if the whole product is nine pretty simple and straightforward RESTful API endpoints with OAuth2 integration(eg. [1]), then I have a hard time to understand why there are not hundreds of other companies doing t…

From a quick search, at least four apps for remote car unlocking are available. Not clear what makes this new one special.

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

#294

Post by stcredzero »

SolarNet wrote: post #182
aw3c2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.

No he means "The Chinese". Not the people, the government. He was quite clear about that in the full quote . > The Chinese also do this. (As in, the government seems to encourage it outright.) Way to be outraged through your own selective reading.

Okay, to be fair, I wrote the comment, then immediately thought, okay that could be misinterpreted, then added the parenthetical right afterwards. I didn't do an "(EDIT:)" because I thought no one would have come in so soon. The poor sap might have fallen prey to my foolish decision to use an optimistic concurrency protocol.

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

#295

Post by [deleted] »

whoisjuan wrote: post #198
keithwhor wrote: post #114

Smartcar has raised $12M in financing from A16Z and NEA. The difference between $12M and $55M is a single financing stage. What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking. This is great PR for Smartcar all things considered, and I actually think has a fantastic silver lining:…

> What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. They didn't steal the docs (not only the docs). They stole the whole public facing architecture as evidenced by the fact that they are using in some instances the exact same API resources names and method names.

[deleted]

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

#296

Post by crankylinuxuser »

jjeaff wrote: post #187
aw3c2 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Chinese You mean "Chinese companies". "The chinese" is just racist.

Is it also racist to say, "The Americans"?

Its easier to be faux-outraged.

Now its the Chinese that encourage ignoring copyright/patent/trademark/trade secret laws. It helps them get their country ramped up with regards to industrialization.

Japan did so before that, in the 60s and 70s.

The USA also did so when we broke off from England. And later, Hollywood was made to get away from Edison's and others patents.

But complaining that "The Chinese" is derogatory is petty posturing and fake outrage.

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

#297

Post by maxgiraldo »

joeax wrote: post #100
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…

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 docs for the API, especially for a company whose primary users are software developers, is a core part of the product offering. Just look at the investments that AWS, Twilio, and Stripe make in their docs. This stuff matters.

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

#298

Post by crankylinuxuser »

king_magic wrote: post #274
evanlivingston wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they provide the product at a lower price?

Even then, they are still parasites with no ethics.

If you won't throw your ethics into the pit for power, someone else will. And them everybody will be forced to throw the shared ethics or be outcompeted. And collectively, everyone will be poorer as a result.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

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

#299

Post by alluro2 »

coverband wrote: post #228
joeax wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agreed. It sounds like a case of "this looks good, let's follow their format" and revising words/paragraphs just enough so you won't be blamed for plagiarism. The API parameters are very generic so it shouldn't be considered cloning.

It seems like you haven't seen the exact same copied parameter examples? I don't really see how this can be defended as not cloning - it's one thing to use others as "inspiration" and take in some general good ideas, but copy someone else's work in such a blatant manner is disgusting. If I were amongst their investors, I'd be pissed.

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

#300

Post by KorematsuFred »

I built a technology to make digital books from old copyright expired printed books in various less popular languages. After I put a lot of content online and getting decent traffic from google search I started receiving DMCA take down notices from an American company that had simply copied all my data to their website and claimed to google that it is their copyright. (Imagine the audacity to call Bible translation from 1800s their own copyright).

When I tried to file an appeal with Google I had to agree to abide by California jurisdiction and American laws. I am not even American. Why should I ?

I am happy if Google blocks my site in American owing to DMCA because US traffic for me is next to zero. But I am not sure why DMCA should apply to India.

Post reply on HN