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Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by jacquesm on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:32PM (#37422536)
Of course it isn't horrible advice, legal affairs are dealt with by lawyers and courts. If you have a product out there in the market you should go to bat for it.

And yes, it might make your company fail. But that goes for a well funded competitor outright copying your product as well.

Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by aaaaaaaaaaa10 on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:35PM (#37422575)
This would require millions in legal fees.
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by jacquesm on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:40PM (#37422660)
Not it won't. If it is an outright copy (that's relatively easy to prove) you can have an injunction issued, besides that the bad press alone might get them to back off. I've brought a lawsuit like that and won << $100K.
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by aaaaaaaaaaa10 on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:45PM (#37422743)
How many hours in legal fees did you pay for your attorneys?
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by jacquesm on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:52PM (#37422846)
A few hundred in total. What helped is that they actually did copy text verbatim, so it was very easy to prove. Their defense: they stole it but not from us... go figure. Needless to say that didn't land very well with the judge.
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by pseudo0 on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:49PM (#37422807)
The trick is getting an objective assessment of how strong the case is, the risks, opportunity cost, etc. There are a lot of lawyers who are perfectly happy to tilt at windmills for $500 an hour until you run out of money.
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by jacquesm on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:53PM (#37422862)
Yes, that's true. But presumably OP has a lawyer, after all they run a business.
Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by nico on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:56PM (#37422922)
Legal action is fine as long as you have the time and money to do it

For the looks of it, in this case they should either not do it at all or just wait until they have enough money to do it

Even large companies wait for the right timing to sue

I know a company that had copied some images from Instacart. Instacart knew about it, but they waited until Uber acquired the company, then they sued Uber

Legal action is incredibly expensive and time consuming, especially in the US

Re:YC company copied our product, what can we do? by tptacek on Saturday September 09, 2023 @11:51PM (#37452729)
What are the indicators you're seeing in this story that legal fees would have a real ROI? I think it's good to be skeptical of paying elective legal fees.