Aspiring partners accuse Apple of copying their ideas | Hacker News Reader

Aspiring partners accuse Apple of copying their ideas

wsj.com

128 pointsSirLJ103 comments

This was true of Microsoft in the 1990's. Just ask Gary Kildall among others.

My personal brush with this was in a startup I was at 3 years before RFC 2616 (HTTP compression). We had developed a client proxy and server that would not only compress HTML pages but also bundle in a zip file all the images (TCP connection ramp up time was a thing) and it dramatically sped up page load on what was then a slow internet.

Microsoft came sniffing, on the pretense they were interested in buying our company or at least licensing. But then they ghosted us, and if I recall correctly, those features ended up in IIS and Internet Explorer as proprietary extensions, when Microsoft was trying to embrace and extend the web to beat Netscape.

I should say it was 3 years before RFC 2068 (2616 superseded).

When Microsoft came out with their extension, and then it eventually ended up in HTTP/1.1 (or at least some version of it), we pivoted to a primarily client-side product that offered read-ahead caching, metasearch (could perform a query on multiple search engines like Hotbot, Altavista, Infoseek, etc. -- this was pre-Google) and save and integrate the results. It would also then rerun those queries periodically and highlight new results, and you could save or bookmark.

We also used that search technology in a product that would monitor trademark use, which companies used to keep track of where and how their trademarks or brand names were being used. We never made enough to keep that side of the business running, while the web consulting/development side grew and grew. These were pre-2000 days when businesses were wanting to "get online".

Would you be able to share any more details on the startup - privacy allowing?

What tech were you using on the client (Windows 3.x/95?)/server-side?

Did WebTV/MSN TV do anything of this?

(Fascinated with early HTTP/web optimization tech because of my part in creating the much later Opera Mini - launched mid 2005.)

Sure thing! I was on the client-side, and joined in 1995, when there was already a version 1 of the compression/connection piece. I started work and was lead on the search product.

If I remember correctly, we were developing on Windows 3.1 with Microsoft Visual C/C++ 7.0 to start and then moved to Windows 95 and Visual C++. We used Microsoft Foundation Classes, as well as Rogue Wave libraries (tools.h++ I believe).

We were funded by some guys who had made a lot of money in government software contracts (we were near a major Airforce base).

Here is a Google folder link with some scans of contemporaneous ads and press coverage:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzleZlz4NcDSMDc0VTBp...

Brilliant, thanks!

(For future readers: The product name was Blaze Web Performance Pack, offered by Datalytics Inc, Dayton, Ohio. They used the domain speeditup.com in some ads.)

This happens with any sufficiently large platform. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon all offer large platforms and the developers develop a "feature" on that platform. They might come up with the same idea independently, or more likely the big one steals the small one's lunch. And the "scouting interview" happens at every level, even the smallest players dangle nice offers to goad some useful info from candidates.

Sometimes the features are obvious though. I remember developers complaining when Android got a built in flashlight toggle making almost every flashlight app redundant - and thank God for that, this is a legitimate feature of the platform.

I can't read the full article but on one hand Apple poached employees which sounds legal on the face of it. On the other hand the patents for the technology that Apple filed were not legitimate [0] according to the courts. So the issue here seems to be more that the patent review process is weak and requires a lengthy and expensive court case to clarify. Something a small company may not afford.

This isn't "just" that Apple&Co are abusing smaller players and copying products or features. The problem is systemic because Apple&Co bought and paid for the entire framework in which everyone else operates. Your elected officials, legislators, laws, rules, regulations, and courts are tailored for Apple&Co, or at the very least are heavily favoring them with very few exceptions. Until that's treated everything else is a symptom. Decades ago the kiss of death from the company I was in came from IBM. Same story, less resources to fight it in court.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/court-says-med-t...

> I can't read the full article but on one hand Apple poached employees which sounds legal on the face of it. On the other hand the patents for the technology that Apple filed were not legitimate [0] according to the courts. So the issue here seems to be more that the patent review process is weak and requires a lengthy and expensive court case to clarify. Something a small company may not afford.

It's also something else that I find pretty bad business conduct: Apple, Google, Microsoft - they all love to have someone else (i.e. venture capital) bear the cost of proving that a piece of technology actually will work out and is technically feasible, and then incorporate it into their product. Even if it's a legit acquihire or acquisition, the VCs are stuck with the bills for the failed attempts.

On the flip side, often the acquihires are ways for VCs to get a soft landing for a company that isn't working and return a little capital. There are reasons that venture capitalists maintain close relationships with acquisition decision makers a big tech companies.

Source: in the VC industry

People often think VC companies are either 0% or 100% unicorn; quite a few of them are somewhere in the "this probably almost could have been a viable business if it didn't have so many demands on profit" (there's a term for this, lifestyle business? I forget.) Acquihire can be a wonderful exit for those, as the VC can basically get back some or all of the money poured in, the people in the company get a job, and sometimes the product even survives as a feature.

> Apple, Google, Microsoft - they all love to have someone else (i.e. venture capital) bear the cost of proving that a piece of technology actually will work out and is technically feasible, and then incorporate it into their product

It isn't just them. All large companies do this. They constantly watch the little players and anytime one of them does something interesting that seems like it is working they buy the company - this is in fact something venture capitalists count one: it is one of the easiest exist strategies they have.

Most big companies also play venture capitalists themselves: they are constantly looking for startups to invest in, with the idea that if that company produces something useful they will buy the company completely, if not they have carefully limited their losses.

Right but I can't imagine this is something you can change as long as the other participants are willing to take that risk. For VCs this is like playing a lot of roulette tables at once for a potential big pay day. A single player like the article's Masimo Corp doesn't have the luxury of multiple roulette tables so they are far more exposed.

Letting someone else go first doesn't have to be bad practice, someone always goes first and the others follow. Different players have different risk appetites and this can lead to healthy competition. Unless it's abusing a position of power. Look at Amazon when they use knowledge about products and sales that are normally not public to launch their competitors, or Apple here taking over the engineering team legally but then stealing the tech probably assuming the chips will fall their way.

An oldie but goodie: https://www.davar.net/HUMOR/STORIES/MS-CUISN.HTM

Thanks for this gem. Websites like this, packed full of content, make me feel young and curious again.

You can tell it's going to be golden just from the way the URL is setup!

This has been true for many. many iOS releases. The good apps that become essential eventually get built into the operating system. This happened with sleep trackers, menstruation trackers, numerous other HealthKit apps, SwiftKey/Skype, Tile (the AirTag-like thing), camera features borrowed from the best third party camera apps, the list goes on and on.

Building for iOS is a great way to show Apple that there's a market for something :)

Same as Amazon marketplace.

If you prove an idea is successful on a large platform, that idea gets used by the platform directly.

This happened to an e-commerce business I did some work for. They became a top seller in their product category but then found themselves competing with Amazon. Only the manufacturers themselves could compete at that point.

Grocery stores do the same thing.

New product category of some food or condiment suddenly starts selling, the store has the sales data and finds someone to make the same thing and sells it under a house brand.

yes for a large enough portion of the population - if your app is useful for every kid, every adult or all of one general traditional gender - that's a big market - if you're very successful the platform will take over.

If on the other hand you have the top selling real estate portfolio management app in the world I don't expect the platform will fold that up in their offerings, even if you are making more money on that than any of the apps with more universal appeal.

>If on the other hand you have the top selling real estate portfolio management app in the world I don't expect the platform will fold that up in their offerings

Why not? In hindsight, we see "menstrual tracking" as an obvious fit now for a more complete Apple Health, but it's very easy to apply that same exact thinking to menstrual tracking.

Using your real estate portfolio management app, ok maybe Apple doesn't replicate it exactly as is, but what's stopping them from turning Apple Home into a more complete home control experience, where you can buy and sell in an easier way or incorporate Airbnb elements. Heck, having more control over your home totally fits their privacy MO. It might seem far fetched now if you don't have the vision, but again same about things like health tracking just 8 years ago!

So I would rethink this angle, I don't believe the determining factor is if it's a big market vs a niche market. A weather app is a niche market, yet they gobbled that up. An infinite canvas brainstorming app is a niche market, here comes Apple's Freeform.

actually I guess I was unclear earlier, when I said real estate portfolio management I was thinking about a real estate agent managing the properties they needed to flog and contacts for said flogging.

>A weather app is a niche market, yet they gobbled that up.

I guess you and I will have to agree to disagree about how much of the population is affected by the weather, I say all of it, you evidently much less.

Gobbling it up is actually interesting for weather apps, because the weather app, and the clock and other apps that have to do with stuff that everyone in the world needs is basically the kind of thing my argument says will always happen for a platform.

>>If on the other hand you have the top selling real estate portfolio management app in the world I don't expect the platform will fold that up in their offerings

>Why not?

Apple's main business is selling devices with other ancillary businesses growing up to support this primary business, of course from outside it can look like these ancillary businesses are very nice to have indeed and any one of us might be happy to have them but for Apple they are rounding errors. And if you have one of these businesses already and Apple comes calling then it's like the WSJ article points out - not good for your business because Apple might just decide to pack it up in their platform and give it away for free or provide a much better implementation than you can and up the profile of their apps in their store.

But in the end Apple is mainly interested in making one of these apps because it enhances their platform for the general population (or their historical target demographics that are still of some importance to the Apple brand). Thus Apple is not going to be making apps targeted at lawyers even though such apps might make a LOT of money because a lawyer app LOT of money to Apple is a pittance.

The funniest part is when an apple/big tech recruiter contacts you, you get to explain your app's design choices during the interview process, they don't hire you and launch that competitor of yours.

If a big company is so bereft of design ideas they have a process to collect them from interview debrief and build them into product requirements, that company is dead. I'm very skeptical that ever happens.

I'm sure that there have been times when someone mentioned design / arch / marketing strategies in an interview and later saw the same thing implemented, but I mean have have had multiple times in my life where I told nobody an idea and still saw it implemented somewhere else. Ideas are not half as unique as people like to think they are.

Does this actually happen outside of Silicon Valley plotlines? I can't see a SWE interview debrief having enough detail to leak anything useful about a competitor that you wouldn't have gathered through common sense.

I've seen it mentioned multiple times here on this site, but I haven't remembered the link and don't really know how to search for it.

The least believable part of your story is that the recruiter could somehow understand the tech and steal it

Also happened with the app called 'Workflows' which is now known as 'Shortcuts'.

Apple bought Workflow, it wasn't Sherlocked.

I know, OP said the apps get integrated into iOS, was just adding to the set of apps that got built in.

As a consumer, I prefer Apple building all of that into the OS because I assume any other business will sell out at some point. I recall quite a bit of bad publicity when the menstruation trackers were found to be selling data.

The nice thing about Apple is it's incentives are not misaligned. Its revenues are largely based on selling products, not people's data. Whether or not they sell data anyway is perhaps an open question but decisions should tend to err on the side of product sales and most consumers want to control their data.

That just tells me the next wave of revenue growth will come from aligning those incentives....

The growth in Apple advertising belies this thesis.

I typically do too until they incorporate some feature in a bad way. See: Dark Sky.

Can we all agree not to mention Dark Sky anymore? I'm not through the grieving process yet.

But seriously, what a great app that is sorely missed now.

And Apple also made the API available to both Android and Apple developers.

> I typically do too until they incorporate some feature in a bad way. See: Dark Sky.

As a Dark Sky fan for years, I understand losing something you've gotten used to. But Apple Weather is great for most people, and die-hards like me can move to apps like Weathergraph.

Nothing wrong with Apple building in-house solutions or integrating things into the OS. Problems start when a trillion dollar corporation uses their platform to strong-arm smaller development studios or individuals, shuts down their revenue stream for bullshit, confusing reasons, and steals their efforts instead of paying what is effectively chump-change to them, to reward the people who provided content to their platform.

I believe this is why ycombinator does not recommend building a business on top of another company's platform. I suspect OpenAI based businesses will eventually learn this lesson.

I imagine many would like to be bought ASAP.

It's fine to build a business on top of another company's platform. You do need a contingency plan, especially if what you offer can be easily replicated in that platform.

There's no contingency plan possible on mobile unfortunately, you can't remotely switch customers to another platform.

A PWA could work in some cases, depending on the capabilities needed.

Apple vs Epic Games is currently challenging this in courts over Fortnite. You can play on other platforms but the argument is on mobile, you're forced to use their walled garden and let them take 30%.

Yes, and as per the very recent ruling, one would suggest that ycombinator is entirely correct in regards to not relying on a singular other company's platform, since they've decided that Apple is within their rights in regards to a walled garden.

The ruling still deemed illegal restrictions on making people aware that other options exist. But yes, the more one relies on someone else's platform, the more one is just a sharecropper.

You’re a day out of date. Epic lost this case.

Appealed in appeals court. It's not over yet.

It’s already lost in appeals court yesterday. The next step is the Supreme Court. Do you really think they are going to take it up?

What would the contingency plan be in this case? It seems that it would just be to build something else compelling instead. In which case it seems that starting with plan B might be a good idea.

The number of YC startups this batch centered around OpenAI seems to belie this. Although I do remember YC stating this often in effect, at least in past, older content.

To counter my own argument, the other possibility is OpenAI like features become a commodity. I.e. build a product around OpenAI and switch to Google's (eventual) offering at some point.

However, embeddings might end up being the true vendor lock in of our time. If I've based my entire company on OpenAI embeddings (and spent lots of money on these), it isn't clear there would be an easy way to translate to another vendor's offerings.

Isn't this true any time you build a business adding a small bit of value to a larger platform?

The aftermarket showed carmakers demand for superchargers, cup holders, and bigger wheels.

Third parties, including Microsoft, showed Google the demand for Gmail.

And on and on. I am forever at a loss at people's surprise and dismay that a large platform maker will seek to improve their platform by incorporating features that their users are signaling are missing by acquiring from third parties.

This just occurred to me: there is 100% chance that there is Genshin clone by Apple by the end of the decade.

Microsoft already has Steve from Minecraft, Apple will have a 14 years old girl on Apple Campus Lunar in aluminium boots over latex suit, named, say, Isaac, at which point the online landscape will be so absurd that Zuckerberg in Meta avatar explaining their Nintendo partnership is going to look as natural and comforting as an Uber Orbit’d bowl of soup out at the side of a mountain in rural Mongolia.

And I bet, the audiences’ focus in 2029 WWDC Keynote will be, whether she will finally reveal her $19840/mo. R18+ plans on iPatreon.

I recall there being a thing about a drum machine app, as well, and iirc F.lux had faced anti competitive behavior as well.

iOS is a platform and I think it can be argued that platforms are stronger with generic implementations of things most people use. Apple doing this pre-dates Sherlock. The patent aspect is disturbing on the face of it becuase it seems to go beyond healthy competition. I would just argue that platforms should integrate generic features. We all sleep and why can't I get a taste of what a sleep monitor is like as seamlessly as possible. If Apple's built in platform has a better implementation than a company specializing in sleep monitoring I see it as raising the table stakes.

Apple showed the world there was a market for an always connected capacitive touchscreen slab. The world keeps changing and what was once an App becomes a feature.

SwiftKey is still the only keyboard that supports fluently typing both Swedish and English without switching layouts in iOS. It is literally the only keyboard I can use, and Microsoft was about to kill it in 2022, thankfully they changed their mind and finally implemented a feature I'd been requesting for 2 years, the ability to access the input cursor by long-pressing spacebar.

Long-pressing spacebar was previously reserved for changing input layout, and only appeared (and replaced input cursor) when multiple layouts were selected, which is required on SwiftKey for iOS when having both Swedish and English enabled, even though SwiftKey for Android allows users to select the Swedish QWERTY layout for the English language, resulting in two languages but only one layout enabled, and input cursor would continue working.

I find it funny how people just don't learn from history.

There is even a term for it, and it comes from the same exact behaviour from the same exact company: https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...

Apple don't care one iota for any developer on their platforms.

The developer is building on Apple's system and owes the entire opportunity to Apple. Without Apple they wouldn't be able to develop the app or find customers for it.

Equally superficial reading of this ends up to the following statement: Apple is building it's ecosystem on developers. Without developers Apple wouldn't be able to build an ecosystem and find customers for it

This isn’t necessarily true. You can actually have quite a useful device by only using Apple’s software. As a customer, I don’t need third party apps on my iPhone. (There are only one or two third party apps I actually use, and my phone would still be 95% as useful without them.)

I assume that other 5% is the internet?

No?

I use safari as my web browser, which is written by Apple.

I didn’t say “no third party content of any kind”, and this discussion is about app stores after all. Apple not having an App Store would still mean I get to keep safari, so the phone is still 95% as useful. I’d miss my baby feeding tracking app and… not much else.

Apple built hardware, like many others manufacturers, and then used the app store, which is a glorified index with a locked gateway mechanism, to control which software get used on the hardware they sell.

They didn't build an ecosystem more than others, they just made sure to kill any potential competitive ecosystem on the same hardware.

> They didn't build an ecosystem more than others, they just made sure to kill any potential competitive ecosystem on the same hardware.

That's how ecosystems work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglone

>They didn't build an ecosystem more than others, they just made sure to kill any potential competitive ecosystem on the same hardware.

How did that work out for Facebook phone or Amazon phone or Microsoft phone or the myriad of others that tried?

Apple built the best ecosystem and that's why it prints money.

Not at all directed at you, but I find it funny that this stance is often taken by people who would be outright offended if you replaced „Apple“ by „the state“ in statements like this.

That is funny, considering as how private companies are the same thing as the state.

Last time I checked, a private company can’t stop me because “I look suspicious”. They can’t take away my property via civil forfeiture and imminent domain. They don’t take 1/3 of my check. With part of that being a forced retirement plan that I can’t opt out of etc.

Only the government has “a monopoly on violence” and qualified immunity.

"can't stop me"

You mean imprison or kidnap. Large companies can stop you from using their ecosystems or entering their property for almost any reason they like.

And you compare that to what the government can do?

I could live my entire life without using any one of the large corporations.

It would be easier for me to move to a different country than to stop using services or devices of the large corporations.

It's like saying you own your ISP an opportunity because without the internet you can't do much work.

So everybody should develop their own OS and their own iDevice?

That would be great for the planet ...

> Apple don't care one iota for any developer on their platforms.

Why do they always give me that warm fuzzy feeling then?

I never developed for iOS, but I had to work with Apple stuff on the backend (in app purchase, push notification). As a developer, everything Apple provided (documentation, api, reliability) seemed to tell me "you don't really have a choice anyway, do you? What are you going to do, not support iOS? That's right..."

This has become significantly worse in recent years. Apple used to have decent documentation. No it's a dump of function headers

Stockholm syndrome is powerful.

Successful brain washing?

The thing is, yes it sucks for that developer, but many of these apps should have been features of the OS and work better with that deep integration. NightShift is significantly nicer than F.lux. Spotlight search and Notifications (Sherlock and Growl) are things that make sense to be built into the operating system.

Counterpoint: When we were developing a smartwatch for brain health, I was invited to give a talk to the Apple watch team in 2013. What I talked about was up to me and from the questions asked I was able to see behind the curtain of what the team was working on. In follow ups we talked about the science and user experiences but wasn’t asked to divulge any secrets. Had Watch launched with or included the capabilities, maybe I’d feel differently, but I understand in the time since why brain health is so challenging even for the big companies. I pushed them to include blood oxygenation for athletes given that application would lower component costs for us with patients. And yet, says a lot, the team took years to get that right.

By contrast EKG and PPG were already being commoditized by the time Watch included those capabilities. AliveCor and Valencell do both really well, but the protectability is not as deep a competitive moat.

The other half of this is how Apple never shares anything or collaborates outside its walls. I can't tell you how many good engineers I know who took a job at Apple and then immediately disappeared. Websites taken down, GitHub projects removed, all trace of their professional work scrubbed off the Internet now that Apple owned all their time.

I get how valuable the secrecy is for the company but it's not good for the individuals who work there or for the profession.

“We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas,” Apple co-founder Steve Jobs once said.

Or in the case of Dropbox - you are just a feature - he was right considering how obnoxious the Dropbox client has become.

I'm okay with them entering a market. They do their stuff well.

What I'm very much not okay with is that they don't play by their own rules. They're the only company that can provide the services iCloud provides. Their apps regularly get capabilities that no other app can have.

Platform advantage is a big problem that needs regulation. I hope that the Digital Markets Act is an attempt at this, but I worry that it won't go far enough and not touch the areas where I think it's the most needed.

Come on regulators, start treating Apple like Microsoft. If you can force Microsoft to unbundle IE and Teams, why can't you make Apple unbundle iCloud? They're a monopoly on their platform and their platform is the only option many users have (for a variety of reasons).

Microsoft was never forced to unbundle Microsoft or Teams.

> They're a monopoly on their platform and their platform is the only option many users have (for a variety of reasons).

This is prima facie a horrible nonsensical argument that a judge just said was false yesterday.

First off: If you're going to reference something as a way of proving your point, without any other supporting evidence, please post a link.

Secondly: Microsoft voluntarily changed their practices regarding IE and Teams in order to appease regulators during active litigation. Their practices regarding IE happened during the US v Microsoft that required MS be split, but was later appealed, and given the changes that happened in the meantime, the DoJ agreed to not seek to break up MS. The Teams unbundling is actively happening now, see: https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-will-reportedly-unbundle-...

It's undisputed that they are a monopoly on their platform. It's a legal finding that they are a duopoly when it comes to "Mobile Gaming" and that several of their practices violate anti-competitive laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple#Decision

The OP is saying that Apple should be held to the same standards that Microsoft/IE was and be forced to allow other marketplaces on their phones. 35 States Attorneys General, AND Microsoft agree with this and have filed Amicus Briefs to this point. This is not some fringe viewpoint.

At the very least, Apple should be forced to allow full browsers on their platform, not wrappers around the safari rendering engine, which is directly in-line with the changes made during the US v Microsoft lawsuit and subsequent settlement, and while there was no legal finding related to these changes, they appeased the DoJ enough to settle.

> First off: If you're going to reference something as a way of proving your point, without any other supporting evidence, please post a link.

I really need to post a link that Epic literally just lost the case to Apple when Epic argued the same thing?

It was just discussed here yesterday.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/24/apple-wins-antitrust-court...

> Microsoft voluntarily changed their practices regarding IE and Teams in order to appease regulators during active litigation. Their practices regarding IE happened during the US v Microsoft that required MS be split, but was later appealed, and given the changes that happened in the meantime, the DoJ agreed to not seek to break up MS.

That also never happened. There has never been a time since IE was bundled with Windows that it hasn’t been bundled.

The DOJ did not “decide” to drop the case because MS stopped bundling IE. They lost on appeal and the new administration didn’t pursue it.

> The Teams unbundling is actively

You are linking to a “rumor”???

Did you read your own Wikipedia link?

“ Rogers found in favor of Apple on nine of ten counts brought up against them in the case, including Epic's charges related to Apple's 30% revenue cut and Apple's prohibition against third-party marketplaces on the iOS environment.”

> which is directly in-line with the changes made during the US v Microsoft lawsuit

Those “findings” never happened in the US. Which version of Windows was not bundled with IE since 2000?

It’s not just the big guys who steal ideas. Unless you have an agreement in place prohibiting a partner from copying the ideas you shared with them, they are generally free to do so.

Get a sharp lawyer and never just sign someone’s “boilerplate NDA”. At the very least, understand what you are allowing the other party to do with the information you share. If you push back, even Apple may have an alternative NDA they’re willing to sign that is less promiscuous.

People are (correctly) upset when Apple, Facebook, Google etc have anti-poaching agreements. Then whenever developers switch companies, and similar features are announced, this is the inevitable response.

Either employees should be able to move around freely, spreading the knowledge and skillsets in problem domains or they should not be able to do so. The legal frameworks are patents and code copyright. I'd like to see patents go away in general, but the abuse that is alleged here should be examined

All that said, the statement here that "apple steals people" is fundamentally and ethnically wrong. People are not owned by corporations.

In the past I always wondered why Apple would ship a custom browser and email client for iOS/MacOS - they should provide core functionality of an OS but that line seems to have blurred with "customer experience".

Microsoft is doing nearly the same thing via Office365 - OneNote,Office,Teams and Edge rather than WebView2.

It is hard using a third party program on Windows because it is so glaring obvious it looks rather weird.

I've been following the Masimo situation and their case seems pretty strong (though IANAL).

But in many cases the "product" is actually just a feature, not enough to sustain a whole company. And I say this by having made that very mistake myself years ago, and having learned from it.

Isn't this what patents ought to solve? Or is that only when it is the other way around?

That is covered in the article. Basically, Apple will contest the patents to get them invalidated. It seems this tactic is often deployed punitively. If the infringed company sues Apple, instead of settling or contesting the infringement suit, Apple attempts to get the patents invalidated. Apple is accused of even contesting patents unrelated to the suit that the company has also been granted. It also notes that defending a patent can cost millions of dollars.

So... yes, in theory. But in practice, the side with the deeper pockets wins.

Most software patents are utter and complete BS so I have no problem with someone trying to get them invalidated.

If they are valid, unique and original ideas then they should have no problem standing up to a challenge.

Can't you get them to sign a contract before the brain rape starts that they pay close to acquisition sum when features resembling yours based on similar decisions end up in their portfolio?

Nobody would ever sign such a contract. Because the moment they did, the startup would declare that they were worth eleventy billion dollars. Pay up or you can never ship a competing product!

If you really see acquisition diligence as rape, probably just stay out of business.

There was some ancient startup wisdom summarized as "never talk to business development of other companies".

https://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html

It’s funny that tech workers (rightfully) were up in arms when there was industry wide collusion over poaching each other’s employees and now they are complaining that big ole mean Apple is offering engineers twice their compensation. Not to mention I would (and do) take RSUs in a public company any day over statistically meaningless equity in a startup any day.

"Greed is eternal." - The 10th rule of acquisition.

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