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Comment by joeax | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty egregious, but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself. The other company still has the write all the backend code, and given their track record of just ripping stuff off, may not have the engineering chops to pull it off. In addition, as Smartcar continuously improves their product and API, the other company can only react to these changes.

If I was the OP, my reaction would be shock and horror too. But then I'd realize the old axiom of imitation is the best form of flattery.

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> but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itself

You never know. When someone ripped off Parse we were able to deduce which version of our JS SDK was ripped off by which bugs weren’t fixed. We had a weird moral dilemma: we were upset at the copycat yet concerned that their users had security vulnerabilities unpatched.

[Edit: added quote to clarify to what I was responding]

If they didn't catch bugs, maybe they also wouldn't catch booby-traps. Are there examples where developers have done that?

Yeah, that's DRM by another name. I'd be worried about doing it wrong and affecting customers.

FTDI modified the driver for their USB<->RS232 chips so that it would brick counterfeits: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/ftdis...

So not one that worked out well.

The article discusses Microsoft's anti-piracy measures. And it brings back horrible memories. So I had this server, running Windows Server 2000. And there was a nearby lightning strike, which bricked the motherboard.

But hey, service contract. Except that the company had gone through reorganization. So they sent me a motherboard that was comparable and compatible with the box. But it had a different seller code, so my copy of Windows Server 2000 wouldn't install.

Microsoft couldn't/wouldn't fix that. So I had to return the replacement motherboard, wait for another replacement, and install it. But hey, it all worked out in the end.

In the mid-nineties a company named Avanti stole code from Cadence Design Systems (where I worked at the time, though I had no involvement in the case). This was first discovered by an engineer noticing that error messages in the two systems were similar in ways that made no intuitive sense. Case was unusual in that several Avanti executives actually wound up going to jail for the theft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadence_Design_Systems,_Inc._v...

The actual saying is "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". Sorry, but it's a pet peeve of mine when people replace "sincerest" with "best", because it changes the point of the adage.

Because sincerity implies the flattery is entirely genuine, rather than best suggesting it is heaping praise upon you? Hadn't thought of that; it's a good distinction to make.

The docs for the API, especially for a company whose primary users are software developers, is a core part of the product offering. Just look at the investments that AWS, Twilio, and Stripe make in their docs. This stuff matters.

Given the current ruling in Oracle v. Google, though, I'd imagine Smartcar would have grounds for a legal case. If Oracle is awarded damages from Google for "copying" the Java API specification in Android, even with a different underlying implementation, then I'd imagine Smartcar can highlight the similarities to their own dispute with Otonomo. The tricky thing is it looks like Otonomo is an Israeli company so I'm not familiar with how US court rulings apply across international boundaries -- perhaps at the very least Smartcar can attain an injunction against Otonomo within the US.

Otonomo apparently has an office in the U.S., so presumably they'd fall under U.S. jurisdiction:

https://otonomo.io/about-us (see bottom of page)

"Given the current ruling in Oracle v. Google, though, I'd imagine Smartcar would have grounds for a legal case."

Which might be the best news Otonomo gets all day. In addition to outfunding them, now their competitor is going to focus their time and cycles not on the competition for this market space, but in expensive legal actions with a dubious chance of success.

If I were smartcar I would ignore Otonomo (or at least their shameless ripoffs of your public facing code bits) and double down on the business of beating them with your product.

I'd take money over flattery any day though.

Money is flattering.

And yet, flattery is not money.

It can be:

https://flattr.com

Fiattery :-)

Looks to me like they are copying the entire concept, not just the docs. Seems like very little intellectual creativity went into the creation of their API.

An API usually embeds significant design decisions that are hard work to come up with. That said, there is some precedent for companies reimplementing competitors' API verbatim in order to get customers to port their applications more easily...

If it wasn’t already, the docs and the code should be copyrighted. It costs nothing and should be relatively easy to litigate in the case of copy pastage lol

It IS copyrighted.

To lose copyright, the author has to explicitly volunteer to sell the rights or give them away. A work has copyright protections the moment it is created.

Correct. Though they now need to register their copyrights (proving original art) in order to move to the lawsuit phase.

So they're making a compatible API. I would consider this a good thing.

But the design choices wrt the public interface is not nothing either!

Agreed. It sounds like a case of "this looks good, let's follow their format" and revising words/paragraphs just enough so you won't be blamed for plagiarism. The API parameters are very generic so it shouldn't be considered cloning.

It seems like you haven't seen the exact same copied parameter examples? I don't really see how this can be defended as not cloning - it's one thing to use others as "inspiration" and take in some general good ideas, but copy someone else's work in such a blatant manner is disgusting. If I were amongst their investors, I'd be pissed.

Oh I have seen it, and I'm not suggesting they haven't copied that. I'm saying that most client SDK documentation looks alike at least for authentication etc. and when you look at the examples given for Otonomo, most of it is boilerplate information.

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