Slashdot Mirror
'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 wrote like almost exactly the same thing a week ago...
Many companies, including my own, obtain patents for defensive purposes. I have zero interest in attacking someone, but you will find it virtually impossible to obtain seed (much less VC or strategic) funding without a plan for providing even rudimentary protections for your IP - most especially if you're building something for an existing market (where doubtlessly there are existing patents.)
That doesn't absolutely guarantee you wont be sued by some other asshole who uses patents to attack, but it keeps them from trying to make a quick buck off of you, and it makes it significantly less likely.
Loading...
Maybe the problem is that everyone is doing the pretty much the same stuff. If there's not a lot of originality in what you're doing and you're not standing out, of course you'll be extremely easy to rip off.
Ezekiel 23:20
This feels unfair when it happens to you, but it’s just how it goes, and the entire ecosystem benefits. Every app — even yours — includes countless “standard” and “obvious” features and designs that, at one time, weren’t. Everything is a remix. A great design or feature can give you a competitive advantage for a little while, but it’s always temporary. Compete on marketing, quality, and what you can do next, not the assumption that nobody can copy what you made.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Who is this guy, and why the heck are we supposed to listen to him?
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.
Only Apple FanBoys will defend Apple. That's all.
Ahh the old "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" strategy. Well played.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. In fact, when you think about it, ideas are an expense. It is the execution that matters.
This is very true. I had a mentor of mine once point out that if you think you have an idea that nobody else has thought of then you should put down whatever you are smoking. Protecting an idea is very expensive so it had better be a really good one to be worth the bother. Coca-Cola is a multi-billion dollar company and they have a product that is ridiculously easy to knock off. But their business execution is second to none and for most products that is what really matters. This remains true even if you have a product that justifies patents and other idea protection. You still have to execute or someone else will figure out a way to make a buck in your place.
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.
A mere $20k marketing budget is not going to buy you much of a competitive advantage, and certainly not against "any adversary big enough to matter". Their $200k marketing budget (if not $2M or more) is going to crush you. The only defense you have against them is patents.
"But if you try to sue them, they'll bury you in legal fees!"
Yes and no... First, those big cases are the ones firms will take on contingency - look at Microsoft v. i4i and their $450M judgement. Law firms will happily defer fees for a bite at those. So even if they try to bury you, they're not really burying you, but your lawyers who are willing to take on that risk.
Second, you don't have to be involved at all: if you have a giant adversary, then odds are you probably have two giant adversaries. So if one steals your idea, then approach the other with an offer to assign the patent to them (with a royalty-free grantback license to you). They'll go after your competitor for you, you get a chunk of capital (and possibly royalties) that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and you can still practice your invention. At worst, you end up competing with one giant adversary rather than two or more.
Mr. Arment should probably stick to developing apps, rather than offering legal advice.
My company doesn't bother with patents. We have competitors, and many of the apps have many of the same features. We compete on quality and service (and maybe price but I don't know about that). Somehow it's still worth improving our app even though our competitors are free to take our ideas and implement them independently.
The problem is that if you come up with a great app, a company will come along, copy it, and put marketing dollars behind it. You won't "not continue to make money", your app won't have time to go viral before someone else's does. Look at Farmville - it was a pretty direct clone of an existing game. However, Zanga was able to copy it and market it such that more people saw Farmville first than the original. So the original developer didn't "develop a reputation", Zynga did. So the original developer didn't "stop getting paid", Zynga took all the money.
It repeats again and again. It's fine to say that don't like 95 year copyrights (we agree). It's another to say "your work will be ripped off by someone with a PR budget, and fuck you."
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Innovation is just a buzzword. None of your thoughts were "new." Like any other second-hand items you come to possess, they may be "new to you," but they're not actually new.
> even if you get one ($20,000+ later), you can't afford to use it against any adversary big enough to matter
Right, so that's why there's a bunch of nobodies successfully suing fortune 500 companies in Texas.
Because the term "patent troll" doesn't exist.
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%.
In the United States contingency is almost exclusively for personal injury cases. It is not something you can just plan for and assume you'll have access to. That is idiotic.
Well, as a patent attorney at a large law firm, I can tell you you're absolutely incorrect. Frankly, I have no idea where you got this idea. Not only do most firms have contingent fee arrangements, there are also investors who will invest specifically for the purpose of funding a lawsuit.
Where did you get this misconception, and why are you so adamant that the alternative possibility is "idiotic"?