Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by rsync » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

kevinguh wrote: post #336

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…

Given the current ruling in Oracle v. Google, though, I'd imagine Smartcar would have grounds for a legal case. If Oracle is awarded damages from Google for "copying" the Java API specification in Android, even with a different underlying implementation, then I'd imagine Smartcar can highlight the similarities to their own dispute with Otonomo. The tricky thing is it looks like Otonomo is an Israeli company so I'm no…

"Given the current ruling in Oracle v. Google, though, I'd imagine Smartcar would have grounds for a legal case."

Which might be the best news Otonomo gets all day. In addition to outfunding them, now their competitor is going to focus their time and cycles not on the competition for this market space, but in expensive legal actions with a dubious chance of success.

If I were smartcar I would ignore Otonomo (or at least their shameless ripoffs of your public facing code bits) and double down on the business of beating them with your product.

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

#362

Post by osrec » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #325

joshfraser wrote: post #286

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors. I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that t…

20 years ago was involved in the sale of a division to some investors. Involved in the same way a chicken is in the poultry business. The law firm didn't know to sanitize their documents. The upshot was they was billing a lot of hours at $500/hr for a clerk to do simple search and replace on previously existing contracts[1]. We'd read the contract find stuff that was utterly wrong and tell them. And the clerk would p…

In my experience, this is the bread and butter for a lot of law firms. Especially for simpler things like rental contracts and property conveyancing etc. It's got to be disrupted soon enough!

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

#363

Post by opportune » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #318

joshfraser wrote: post #286

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors. I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that t…

Hopefully the law firm in question went through your answers and made sure that your competitor's terms were also appropriate for you. That's where the legal expertise is needed, not in simply writing text.

Or they figured it would get noticed and were going to try to upcharge. "Well, 4 figure invoices get 4 figure quality contracts" or something like that.

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

#364

Post by jimcsharp » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #359

inlined wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself You never know. When someone ripped off Parse we were able to deduce which version of our JS SDK was ripped off by which bugs weren’t fixed. We had a weird moral dilemma: we were upset at the copycat yet concerned that their users had security vulnerabilities unpatched. [Edit: added quote to clarify to what I was responding]

If they didn't catch bugs, maybe they also wouldn't catch booby-traps. Are there examples where developers have done that?

Yeah, that's DRM by another name. I'd be worried about doing it wrong and affecting customers.

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

#365

Post by matz1 » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #352

matz1 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He win the criminal suit. >And the only reason you bring it up is because it is exceptional So you need exceptional lawyer. >The quality of your lawyer will help in the gray areas An exceptional lawyer will make seemingly black and white situation to looks like grey. > in general you will lose if you go to court with a case where you were in the wrong Sure, the point of court is argue that meaning of "wrong"

> He win the criminal suit. You don't 'win' a criminal suit. The standards of proof in a criminal suit are different than the standards of proof in a civil one, because the punishment in a criminal suit is much heavier than in a civil suit (where the maximum is some monetary penalty, whereas in a criminal suit it is imprisonment or in some countries even death). I really think your view of the legal system is somewha…

He didn't get death penalty or imprisonment is a win to me.

The reality is legal system consist of human in various capacity, judge, lawyer, jury, even public opinion. Its all boil down to convincing these human. Given the right method or argument, you can convince any human. Sure some case are harder then the other but doesn't mean it impossible. Really really hard != impossible.

>there is no such case that it can always be won given the right lawyer or argument

What is your reasoning ?

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

#366

Post by stingraycharles » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #217

Gpetrium wrote: post #152

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…

Then can't you too find other investor for yourself ? You have the advantage being the one that come out with the idea to sell it to the investor. Or heck pitch it to the same investor too.

They should definitely reach out to the investor. But not before getting proper legal advice on the matter.

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

#367

Post by IvanK_net » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

I don't understand what is the problem. If you made your API public, you want people to use it. If another company decides to use the same API, it is only good, in my opinion.

It is very similar to an issue with phone chargers. There were times, where each phone manufacturer had a different charger, and if a new company decided to use a charger desing from Nokia, they would probably sue them. I am so glad those times are over and we use USB everywhere. Arent you glad, that your API could be used everyhwere?

Or another example, imagine if every web browser had a different "web language" like Javascript, and developers would have to make several versions of their website for each browser. And if a new browser wanted to display webpages ment for Firefox, Firefox would sue them.

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

#368

Post by sonnyblarney » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

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…

"Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market."

This is really a different case though.

The German VC is saying: "Food delivery is working in the US, they've validated the model + EU VC's will now get behind that, so 'do that like they are'.

They are more or less competing, not exactly cloning.

Copying API's is a whole other level.

Literally copying docs etc. is another level.

The thing is - the small company may have some power here. The bigger company does not want an ugly, permanent lawsuit hanging over them. With the screen-scraping and blatant copying, it's going to make it seem, at least popularly bad, and possibly add emotive impetus to a judge. The copier cannot say with a straight face that they were not copying to a judge.

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

#369

Post by ozim » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

arendtio wrote: post #346

joshfraser wrote: post #286

Several years ago, I hired a boutique Silicon Valley law firm to create some terms of service and privacy documents for my company. As part of their long list of questions about how we would use our customers data, they asked for a list of similar companies and competitors. I'd already reviewed all of our competitor's terms to get a sense of what other people were doing. So, when I reviewed the final documents that t…

Actually, I wish creating legal documents was that simple. I mean, most of the time competitors require quite similar documents, but as legal documents (terms of service, privacy, etc.) are also protected by copyright, copying them is simply illegal AFAIK (IANAL). On the other hand, I wonder what the job of lawyer should look like. Writing a similar document but carefully choosing different wording to avoid to be sue…

If you just copy competitors terms of service you are on the hook. If you sign contract with lawyer and he does that, he is on the hook. You pay 5K for not being liable for a copied document.

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

#370

Post by huffmsa » Mon, Apr 22, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #322

huffmsa wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TurnItIn resells all of the data you submit to them. Any paper a student is required to sent to the service (it's not optional at schools where it's in place) is added to the dataset which they ultimately profit from, with nothing paid back to the students who own the original IP. It'd be like YouTube using your videos for ContentId, but not having any avenue for you to profit from said videos. Oh and uploading to Yo…

I wasn't suggesting they copy the business model, just the functionality. If it's all websites, there'd be no need to have a separate database.

And I didn't think you were. My point is aside from the actual topic at hand.