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

Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by jerf on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:30PM (#19721431)

I don't particularly agree with you; I've often thought that amounts to trying to win the debate by nuking the entire playing field. Even if you win, have you?

But I can spot you that anyhow, because there's a perfectly reasonable fallback position: This is illegal. It's a copyright infringement at the very least, and possibly other things as well. And being "illegal", the "what are you gonna do about it" actually has clear, well defined answers. Smartcar.com is doing them a favor by serving a cease & desist, as there is nothing preventing them from moving straight to legal action.

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by janoc on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:49PM (#19721643)

Copying a design is not illegal. Unless the design is patented (which it doesn't seem to be or the OP would likely have said so in the article), everyone is free to copy any design they want.

That you wish something was true doesn't make it so, unfortunately.

What is not OK is copying the documentation verbatim, that is copyrighted. However, that is, frankly, the least of the problems (and easiest to rectify) when someone is taking your product idea wholesale.

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by cgy1 on Monday April 22, 2019 @04:46PM (#19722807)

I see two issued US patents for smartcar: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9870656B2/ https://patents.google.com/patent/US10169825B2/

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by bdowling on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @02:56AM (#19726205)

Those patents are directed towards "method[s] for processing requests for vehicular data", which at first glance appear unrelated to the descriptions of web APIs authenticated by OAuth that Smartcar is complaining about.

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by kraigie on Thursday May 02, 2019 @02:03PM (#19810649)

>everyone is free to copy any design they want

Copying text or pictures would be copyright infringement.

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by jerf on Monday April 22, 2019 @03:08PM (#19721819)

So, I'm wrong about this act being illegal, because it's not illegal, except for the parts where it is illegal?

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by matz1 on Monday April 22, 2019 @02:54PM (#19721693)

even if its illegal, its nothing unless you win it in court.

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Re:Otonomo, with nearly $55M in funding, is cloning our product by jerf on Monday April 22, 2019 @03:09PM (#19721828)

I think I mentioned that when I said "moving straight to legal action".

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