Hey ya'll,
So I remember reading back a while ago on HackerNews an article about a very particular legal case involving property. The story goes like this:
There's a guy, let's call him Mike (because I cannot remember or find the article anymore). Mike's spent a few years developing a mobile app, which he's pushed out to the app stores online. He's given it a name, lets call it FriendFinder, because it's relevant to what his app does.
Fast forward a bit and a start-up has pushed out a very similar product that does the same thing, and calls it FindFriends. This startup is backed up by a pretty impressive venture capitalist firm and within no time, Mike gets a email from their lawyers demanding he either he takes his app off the market or he sells over all his rights, data, and code to these guys, or else he's getting sued for it anyways.
Uhm...what?
When I read this I was super surprised but also a bit sad for this Mike fellow, because what can he really do to protect himself from this large company over this intellectual property? Considering the name and the product is so similar, is there definitive proof that someone has more ownership of it?
In the end, I never followed this story to see where it went, but let me know how ya'll feel about this situation.
True, in this case I think it depends on how much money each company can spend on the law suit and one would have to consider whether or not each party could prove that they came up with the idea independently. For example, if they came up with the idea from scratch they have to write new code to produce the product. It can be different but still produce a similar product. If that is the case I think both groups may be in the clear.
ReplyDeleteWhile I may feel bad for "Mike," I also hope he took the right steps in protecting himself for a situation like this. It may be the big companies prerogative to wipe out its competition, but unless Mike protected himself with the correct legal documents when he created his company then he unfortunately may get taken down.
ReplyDeleteUltimately though, I'm not so sure the bigger company has much legal precedence to sue considering (if my knowledge is correct) that the two products while similar are not identical and do not share the same source code. Either way, in our current times, I hope people like Mike understand patent/copyright/trademark laws because IP is just too easy to steal and can be used in malicious ways.
I think you have also highlighted a fundamental problem that all entrepreneurs will encounter: knowing the existing competition/substitutes. I also wonder how it is possible to check that there are no similar products out there, and what happens if there are similar products in progress and not known at the time. Such coincidence are possible and I will like to know how to handle such situations
ReplyDeleteThis is the weird world we live in today. I feel bad for mike too, and not just because we share the same name. You have to be so careful of what you do legally today. While there are many laws protecting the little guy, our legal system can be used to leverage out the common entrepreneur. Tis a shame, hopefully this will change soon enough.
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