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

smartcar.com

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

#371

Post by lrem »

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…

> Also, love them or hate them, having patents helps in situations like these.

Does it though? There is no global patent authority. If the ripoff is not for the US market, only a patent for their market will help. Which might be impossible to get in the first place.

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

#372

Post by dredmorbius »

wbl wrote: post #333
lapnitnelav wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is nothing wrong with competition. Read Smith.

That depends on the circumstances:

Their salaries, too, put [competitors] in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in competition with those who trade with a considerable one. If he sells his goods at nearly the same price, he cannot have the same profit, and at least, if not bankruptcy and ruin, will infallibly be his lot. If he attempts to sell them much dearer, he is likely to have so few customers that his circumstances will not be much mended.

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_V/...

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

#373

Post by vageli »

will_brown wrote: post #292
alexmlamb2 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 cul…

> >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.

Do you have more information about this? It has been my understanding that throughout history, some languages became the "lingua Franca" so to speak while not introducing race conflict. So I'm curious to hear more about the origins of race as a social construct, specifically its roots in language.

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

#374

Post by gpsx »

holtalanm wrote: post #219
dep_b wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people built the world's most popular operating system doing just that - copying Java's API.

thats...not the same.

Why do you say that? In some regards yes, and some no.

I think the intellectual property is in the APIs/"headers". That is what Android uses from Java and what this company is copying from SmartCar. Its not easy to write a good API. (But, I should say, once you have the headers it is not as tough to populate them with code.) As for coping actual documentation, that is just plain stupid but not the _worse_ crime here.

Now, what is different is that many of us don't approve the way Oracle is enforcing the rights on this information. Java is not like the SmartCar APIs in that it has been free to use for so long. All the same I think Oracle should have the legal right to do this.

Many may disagree about Oracle vs Android but I think it is devaluing the work of people like James Gosling _and_ SmartCar if you say there is not intellectual value in the code/API headers.

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

#375

Post by chmod775 »

jaxn wrote: post #179
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…

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…

Try adding some random stuff that you get for basically free with your choice of backend / implementation.

This will waste their time if its a harder problem with their backend / implementation.

Another fun thing you can do is using something that looks like a 3rd-party service/API, but is really just another domain controlled by your company. Make it something specific to your business, so they'll be tempted to use it.

IF they use it, the least you can do is terminate their access at an inconvenient time. This will frustrate their customers as they scramble to do their own implementation.

Final thing you can do is not doing incremental updates, but instead doing big rollouts with many features at once.

That way they'll always be weeks to months behind you.

Basically, when someone is following you, mine the path to the point that it's cheaper and more effective for them to find their own.

Edit: Bonus round is talking about some near-useless feature on your dev blog that would be hilariously expensive and complicated to build, without actually building it. Hope they waste time on it.

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

#376

Post by [deleted] »

jaxn wrote: post #179
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#377

Post by phonon »

ozim wrote: post #369
arendtio wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Almost all TOS and Privacy Policies are copied from each other, and are pretty generic. It's incredibly unlikely anyone would sue you for that...

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

#379

Post by newsoul2019 »

Max_aaa wrote: post #308
iandanforth wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly this is exactly what should be done in most contracts. (In a hypothetical alternate world where law worked more like OSS). Of course it was unethical for them to do it without telling you and trying to charge you $5k for it, but law would be a heck of a lot cheaper if openness and code re-use were the default.

It would be nice to git clone a contract.

Why doesn't all legal work start with a "git clone"?

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

#380

Post by KorematsuFred »

kobiguru wrote: post #350
KorematsuFred wrote: post #300

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 f…

DOn't take this lightly if you are serious about the website. DMCA takedown is worldwide and with European copyright laws in place you have more reasons to worry. Talk to a good copyright attorney. There are many, seek the help of NGOs in this area. Do NOT sit back.

I have blocked my site for Europe any ways. I will not comply with European laws of any kind as the site is fully hosted and run from India.

I would rather focus my energy on getting Indian government pass laws that will protect us rather than pay an attorney for my non profitable website.

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