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'Nobody Cares Who Was First, and Nobody Cares Who Copied Who': Marco Arment on Defending Your App From Copies and Clones (marco.org)
Marco Arment: App developers sometimes ask me what they should do when their features, designs, or entire apps are copied by competitors. Legally, there's not a lot you can do about it: Copyright protects your icon, images, other creative resources, and source code. You automatically have copyright protection, but it's easy to evade with minor variations. App stores don't enforce it easily unless resources have been copied exactly. Trademarks protect names, logos, and slogans. They cover minor variations as well, and app stores enforce trademarks more easily, but they're costly to register and only apply in narrow areas.
Only assholes get patents. They can be a huge PR mistake, and they're a fool's errand: even if you get one ($20,000+ later), you can't afford to use it against any adversary big enough to matter. Don't be an asshole or a fool. Don't get software patents. If someone literally copied your assets or got too close to your trademarked name, you need to file takedowns or legal complaints, but that's rarely done by anyone big enough to matter. If a competitor just adds a feature or design similar to one of yours, you usually can't do anything. You can publicly call out a copy, but you won't come out of it looking good. [...] Nobody else will care as much as you do. Nobody cares who was first, and nobody cares who copied who. The public won't defend you.
Only assholes get patents. They can be a huge PR mistake, and they're a fool's errand: even if you get one ($20,000+ later), you can't afford to use it against any adversary big enough to matter. Don't be an asshole or a fool. Don't get software patents. If someone literally copied your assets or got too close to your trademarked name, you need to file takedowns or legal complaints, but that's rarely done by anyone big enough to matter. If a competitor just adds a feature or design similar to one of yours, you usually can't do anything. You can publicly call out a copy, but you won't come out of it looking good. [...] Nobody else will care as much as you do. Nobody cares who was first, and nobody cares who copied who. The public won't defend you.
I bet large corporations would love to see patents go away, that way they can copy something for a million dollars vs having to buy out the startup.
I know you're joking, but you should take a look at twitch when you have a chance. You'll find a number of developers on there.
In summary he is saying that your legal instrument is as good as the lawyer(s) wielding them. BigCorp will bury you in the legal process and send you bankrupt along the way.
You need to make it easy for companies to buy you out rather than to pursue the legal route. Sell out to a large corporate, and all of a sudden the legal instruments hold validity.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. In fact, when you think about it, ideas are an expense. It is the execution that matters. What can you build in a short space of time, and what can BigCorp provide you to expedite that process.
In an era of easy replication, it is nigh on impossible to protect the angle of the corkscrew for your wine bottle. Execute quickly, take the market using your lead, or watch the clones come into play. Same with software.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
No, in your example, Coca Cola is big enough to crush any copier to dust by simply having their lawyers march in the immediate vicinity of the offender.
Tell that to Pepsi. Coca-Cola didn't get magically huge by having flesh eating lawyers. They got huge because they did a really good job making their product available, consistent, and relevant to their customers. It's not hard to copy the taste of Coke or any of their other drinks and there are countless other brands of cola available some of which arguably taste better. Coke succeeded because they executed the best. Also they aren't as big or as dominant as you seem to believe.
As a matter of fact, there are zounds of similar beverages out there, all over the world, but CC is so entrenched that all copiers combined have maybe 1% marked share compared to CC.
You might want to actually look up some facts before sounding stupid publicly. Coke has about 42% market share in soft drinks. Pepsi has about 30%. ARC Refreshments (the maker of RC Cola) has about 15% of the soft drink market. And the other players split the remaining 8%.