Ask HN: Are Product Ripoffs by Large Companies Legal?

1 points by tenpoundhammer 9y ago ↗ HN

There is a lot of nuance to the subject, but there seems to be an obvious trend where large companies build a platform and then steal the ideas of smaller developers and incorporate it into the platform. It appears to my untrained eye to be anti-competitive and monopolistic.

A small for instance is Apple created Night Shift for IOS which is incredibly similar to F.lux which had been around for years ( but blocked from the AppStore).

Is this behavior legal? Does the HN community feel that it's ethical?

2 comments

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nnn1234 9y ago ↗

Ethical it's not. Leagality if fluid. Also who is going to sue? Strictly speaking is it illegal sure. No one of the customers cares enough to sue( has arbitration agreements) , the other firms are doing a cost benefit analysis

PaulHoule 9y ago ↗

It is legal unless your product is patented or a copyright violation is involved. It is never a bad idea to file a provisional patent application which costs $60 and gives you the intimidation value of saying your product is patent pending.