Given the title of the Dashboard page is &quot;CES Showcase&quot; I&#x27;m confident that&#x27;s just an HTML mockup.

I found more pages on their website <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;35wax6T" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;35wax6T</a>Also their stats dashboard isn&#x27;t secured:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dashboard.otonomo.io&#x2F;dashboard" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dashboard.otonomo.io&#x2F;dashboard</a>you can see public data here

Just read through the blog post. it&#x27;s absolutely nuts.

Who is Rocket? Could you give us a link, please?

Rocket does the exact same thing. Almost pixel perfect clones

I feel like this happens often in tech but most offenders do a better job covering it up. This is pretty blatant.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20190422133544&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;how-otonomo-is-cloning-our-product&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20190422133544&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar....</a>

Check the competitors&#x27; website. &#x2F;s

Looks like the link is down. Is there a mirror?

Archive.fo:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;4l7Wl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;4l7Wl</a>

Wayback Machine:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20190422150111&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;how-otonomo-is-cloning-our-product&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20190422150111&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar....</a>(And a reminder to donate to archive.org if you can!)

Good opinions here. I worked at very early stage startup, and our huge competitors with 1 billion worth of funding were stealing our shit from day 1. Thankfully, we didnt spec out a nice API and all that shit because we were in startup mode. That makes it a bit harder to copy things our stuff because it was a huge pile of undocumented software and data.I think that is just life in tech now. You put out a &#x27;feature&#x27; in your app that is new and cool. Two weeks later the same feature shows up in your competitors app.In our case, always better to be ahead of the curve. You&#x27;ve got a small team with 20 folks who are putting pressure on the 100 person teams at these giant companies.

They could just say &quot;Our API is identical to the Smartcars API, documentation can be found here (link)&quot;. Smartcars might even be happy about that as it&#x27;s free advertising.The way they did it looks much shadier, but I doubt it&#x27;s actually illegal. The longer text blocks are all original, even if clearly inspired by smartcars. The descriptions of paramters is mostly copied verbatim, but I have my doubts it&#x27;s copyrightable, after all there are only so many ways to describe what &quot;access_token&quot; does. The overall structure of the documentation is also clearly copied and is probably protected by copyright, but it&#x27;s easily changed.

Ya, I find it even more interesting that they copied the Smartcars API.In theory, if you copy an API, you also copy its semantics. The docs for it are supposed to be interchangeable. Its touchy. For example, wouldn&#x27;t most people rely and use the Java doc even for Android?Now obviously, redistributing a copyrighted doc on their own website without permission is something else. Cause I&#x27;m guessing docs are copyrightable, but not APIs. The whole thing is getting more interesting to be honest.

Directly copying a document is simple copyright infringement. Just because it&#x27;s documentation doesn&#x27;t mean everyone has a free license to copy and redistribute it.Whether or not any violations occurred in copying code probably depends on whether any employees with company secrets were poached and involved in development. That&#x27;s a very big, well known no-no amongst tech companies. It&#x27;s why Compaq had a complete &quot;clean room&quot; to reverse engineer the IBM PC.

Came to say just this. They say &quot;illegally cloning our product&quot;, but I see nothing illegal so far and I&#x27;d love to be corrected.I doubt it is so, but even if those tokens pass the threshold of originality[0], does a few blobs of superficial text justify a lawsuit?Things would be dramatically different if they&#x27;d copied source code, but so far, it&#x27;s just documentation.[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Threshold_of_originality" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Threshold_of_originality</a>

I don&#x27;t know that &quot;we&quot; decided that at all, and I don&#x27;t think that &quot;we&quot; were ever naive enough to assume that it&#x27;s okay to copy Oracle or Microsoft&#x27;s documentation or code just because they&#x27;re big and &quot;we&quot; don&#x27;t like them.This appears to be a lawyer&#x27;s dream case and I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised that, if this case makes it to court, discovery finds some actual stolen code. If this company ever poached employees they&#x27;d better be very, very careful.IBM &quot;bluewashes&quot; their terminology and vocabulary for this same reason. They can easily catch someone else using IBM-specific language, and they&#x27;ll often call very common things by unique and very different names compared to other companies. This can also help cover for any perceived issues with employees bringing over ideas from their previous company.

Its not even their proprietary API, its OAuth endpoints.

Well, &quot;we&quot; don&#x27;t have authority to decide those things, do we?It looks like API copying violates copyrights on the US, so go for it. In a democracy crazy laws can&#x27;t be crazy just for the bad.

I thought we all decided APIs shouldn&#x27;t&#x2F;couldn&#x27;t be copyrighted because that was evil when Oracle and Microsoft tried to do it?I guess literally copy-pasting the docs is a flagrant violation, but it seems like that&#x27;s the least of their problems. Presumably BigCorp will now get a cleanroom team to re-document the re-implemented API.

A small number of developers are going to see this, unfortunately, and the ding to their reputation will be marginal.I don&#x27;t know what legal recourse smartcar has, but I would think it is time to seek that advice.

Unfortunately for the little guy it&#x27;s the winner take all market. If the well-funded company wins at the end, no one would even remember the other one existed. Is it ethical? Depends on your ethical stands. Happens all the time.

They&#x27;ll fire a couple people and everyone will forget in six months. That does nothing to discourage this type of behavior moving forward.

Yes except if you are a well funded startup and look like amateurs that copy things verbatim that does not bode well for your reputation going forward. Someone needs to get fired for copying shit verbatim.

$150k is probably worth it from a strictly cost benefit perspective.

Someone will get fired and the company will be ordered to pay $30,000 - $150,000 for willful copyright infringement

There are zero material consequences for a well-funded startup to pull shenanigans like this. Why should we be surprised this is happening?

That seems totally backwards to me. Did you mean &quot;unlikely&quot;? The higher profile the investors, the bigger the news story if something dodgy&#x27;s happening.In either case, how does that relate to the existence of a reasonable explanation?

Hard to think of a reasonable explanation for copying somebodys work and publishing it.

You think they accidentally the whole docs?

Could there possibly be reasonable explanation for this? With big name investors involved it&#x27;s likely that respectable and legitimate reporters wouldn&#x27;t be interested in digging up the truth.

The documentation only has a screenshot of the brands supported. Would be nice to just be able to lookup my car brand and make support in the docs instead of having to make an Auth flow first...

Yep! Just check out our docs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;</a>Would love any feedback you may have!

Wait, I can make an app that unlocks my car??

Every business has an obligation to make money. However, the VC game has been filled with a win at all cost mentality that has led to the downfall of many companies - as well as evidence that the companies themselves are not prepare to become public (they aren&#x27;t worthy of the public trust).One could argue that the market is okay with these types of things. But, we talk about doing the right thing. And if it&#x27;s not just lip service, this could be a great opportunity to prove it.

lumbering forward blindly without responding to the red flags a company throws up is not profitable.

What else is it for a VC? Isn’t that literally their purpose?

This is a great opportunity for Bessemer, and the other investors, to demonstrate that it isn&#x27;t returns above all.Updated to include my tweet: 
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MattHurewitz&#x2F;status&#x2F;1120356791932604421?s=09" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MattHurewitz&#x2F;status&#x2F;1120356791932604421?...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;obtain-consent-from-a-driver" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;obtain-consent-from-a-driver</a>

I can&#x27;t find the Otonomo API docs online. Have they been taken down?

I don&#x27;t have a problem with copying another API for compatibility; Think of the Oracle&#x2F;Google lawsuit, and the fact that reverse engineering for compatibility is already a protected right.I do have major issues with verbatim copying of documents and websites, there&#x27;s an obvious copyright violation there.

I would agree on this with one caveat - you should be able to run this battle on a back burner or don&#x27;t go there. If it would consume you ... Don&#x27;t. Your time and positive energy are too important. But if you can (it&#x27;s what&#x27;s in the CEO learning curve imho) spent a small faction of your time dealing with competitors. If this one is a proper competitor and you have leverage (public goodwill, cash to burn for litigation and communication) - go there. Your investors are probably with you if the threat is both to you and their investment. The outrage factor will probably play into your hands as well. A bankrolled litigation fund (smallish) is doable.

&quot;Your company is theoretically worth at least as much as theirs.&quot;Maybe.Having worked in the auto industry (albeit well over a decade ago), it is one of those industries where connections, and knowing how to navigate the relationships, goes a long way. I don&#x27;t know much about either of these companies, or their founders, but in B2B scenarios like this, the value is often related to much more than just the underlying technology.If I were Smartcar, I would look closely at relationships, physical and virtual proximity to major automotive players, and how their suppliers prefer to do business. And, perhaps they already have...

&gt; Summary: They are vulnerable - Get &#x27;emOr, go get $55 Million in VC funding from someone else.You have a major head start. Your company is theoretically worth at least as much as theirs.Complaining about competitors copying you might slow them down a bit. But it will probably slow you down a lot more. On the other hand, using their valuation to raise $55M+ would be a huge boost for you.

If the work SmartCar had done was worth $55 million, I suspect Company X (or their VC) would have used their money to purchase this company for $55 million instead of deciding to waste the time cloning it.Instead, think of the work as a means to an end, the end being revenue.Company X was able to raise $55 million because they were able to demonstrate that the potential market could support the revenue necessary to justify such funds, and that they could use the work already done by SmartCar to get to market more quickly.Now, in my opinion this is very shady and should be grounds for a lawsuit, but in terms of raw business savvy, the $55 million is for a smart business that knows how to execute for less. If money raised was in direct correlation to a quality product or the ability to produce such a product, rather than in direct correlation with e.g., the team (cabal?) involved and their ability to make returns for investors, then we’d be living in a very different world.

&gt; I can imagine it&#x27;d be nice to spend the genuine VC money on company Lamborghinis and penthouses for a few months, declare bankruptcy, rinse and repeator simply refocus the startup on used lambos and penthouses :)

Is it worth 55 mil, or is it just networking?I can imagine the &quot;Kickstarter scam&quot; running in the VC scene, the Kickstarter scam being: you show ads for a product on Kickstarter with the line &quot;300 thousand dollars in backers already! Get yours too!&quot;, but that money isn&#x27;t from genuine backers, coming from your friends instead. Then a chump seeing the ad will think &quot;Oh, this new gadget is popular, it must be good, let me buy 1 for the introductory price!&quot; and gives you his money. Then you just keep the chumps updated with &quot;Sorry for the delays, we have manufacturing difficulties&quot; month after month.So in the VC scene, you could get your friend to invest in your idea for $$$, get other investors interested, and... profit? I can imagine it&#x27;d be nice to spend the genuine VC money on company Lamborghinis and penthouses for a few months, declare bankruptcy, rinse and repeat (just steal the API from the next &quot;Smartcar&quot;...).

This may be a silver lining - a competitor has shown that the work you have done, exactly the work you have done is worth 55 million in VC funding.There are enough people on here who can point you in the right direction, or arrange introductions.Spend at least one of those millions on PR and lawyers to ensure it&#x27;s clear who has the moral high ground, and who should be hired if a company has to choose between you - I mean if they are prepared to breach copyright so blatantly here, who knows what other problems they have in their repos - enterprises can be very conservatice on unknown legal risks like thatSummary: They are vulnerable - Get &#x27;em

Depends who is hosting their documentation. Under the DCMA, hosting providers are obligated to take content down when they recieve a valid takedown notice (They can put it back up when they get a counter notice).

The DMCA can be used to put a fire under them to file a DMCA counternotice, at which point the whole issue with their hosting provider is done and you are down to the basic question of are you going to file, litigate, and win an actual copyright lawsuit on a timeline and at a cost that leaves you with a viable startup.

And now that this has hit HN, I bet they&#x27;re rewriting the docs right now.

A bit naive. I am sure the DMCA can be used to put some fire on their ass to rewrite the documentation though but not much more than that.

No judge would agree that damages are anywhere close to 100k per instance.It just isn&#x27;t something a judge would ever agree to.

Can you not use a DMCA and contact their hosting provider?One per offense.Also, if the docs are registered copyright, willfull infringement per offense is over $100k per instance.$50mil&#x2F;$140k = 357.14Thoughts?

But not their API documentation.  They even copied the exact example UDID.

They didn&#x27;t copy paste API docs too, including typos, which is what we have here

I think that is reductionistic and misguided. I don&#x27;t know the exact inside story of course, but this is how I read it, and how I honestly think this happened. They chose to have a garbage-collected, bytecode-VM-executed, OO language as the main platform for their external apps (the internal kernel is a still Linux with its regular C interface). They decided to implement their own VM from scratch (Dalvik). They decided to use Java language, including syntax and basic system APIs, which would make it very accessible for a ton of existing developers. They could as easily gone for another syntax and base API. It wouldn&#x27;t have been more effort to design and implement (arguably, it could have been less). But of course it wouldn&#x27;t be such an easy sell to existing Java developers. They opted to interpret Java language and API design as an open, public value, and that&#x27;s what was dealt with in court.

Some people built the world&#x27;s most popular operating system doing just that - copying Java&#x27;s API.

I was curious if some of these docs were auto-generate or templated copy, so I double checked some of the text.&quot;The redirect_uri provided in Authorize User step&quot; appears exactly once on the Internet according to Google: at smartcar.com. It looks like Otonomo did in fact copy&#x2F;paste from the SmartCar website.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=&quot;The+redirect_uri+provided+in+Authorize+User+step&quot;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;search?q=&quot;The+redirect_uri+provided+i...</a>

I expected this to be a &quot; I had the idea first&quot; post. But it is actually a copyright infringement post AND makes the offending company look like a bunch of hacks.If they don&#x27;t have the engineering chops to build an API how are going to handle the ops of it.

Sounds like VCs need a plagiarism detector for websites (think TurnItIn) to make sure their portfolio companies aren&#x27;t blatant ripoffs.

Bessemer &amp; Co. likely know that Otonomo is building a drop-in replacement copy of Smartcar&#x27;s API. I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s anything terribly controversial about that, although reasonable people may disagree.Bessemer &amp; Co. probably don&#x27;t know that the docs are literally being copied though.

They would not have looked at the API docs of either the startup they are investing in or their competitor (99.95%). I&#x27;ve worked as VC and technical detail at such a level is basically non existent. Economics, team, market take up the vast majority of the effort.

Getting onboard a company where there is a fast growing but not established market leader might even be a sound investment. Just add more thrust.

&gt; without doing DDIt&#x27;s a Series A, serious DD doesn&#x27;t usually happen this early and a jr. analyst with a finance background wouldn&#x27;t catch something like this.

Bessemer &amp; Co. would not spend this kind of money without doing DD to the point where their competitive review would have snagged the OP&#x27;s efforts. So most likely they know.

If the investors have a board and shareholder majority (which they may not), and really thought this was a terrible investment decision that they want to get out of, then they could vote to wind down the company immediately, redistributing the assets pro-rata (with possible liquidation preferences). This would be roughly the same as &quot;withdrawing funding&quot;.They could recoup a huge part of their investment before things get worse. But again, afaik this requires a shareholder majority, barring any strings&#x2F;triggers on the investment terms that could be activated.

There is no such thing as &quot;withdrawing funding&quot; in this context. The Series A is long closed and Bessemer is deeply entwined with the company&#x27;s governance.The most severe move they could take would be to enforce whatever contractual mechanisms they have to block additional financing pending an independent investigation and replacement of responsible parties. Or they could directly force the matter if investors hold a majority Board vote.

In the US, whether APIs are copyrightable is a question being currently litigated. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google...</a>.The latest decision in that saga is that yes, they can be. Whether that holds up in the Supreme Court is an open question. Most of us hope it doesn&#x27;t, I suspect.Copying documentation is definitely a copyright violation. Similar situation exists with recipes - a list of ingredients can&#x27;t be copyrighted, but the wording of the steps can be. You have to at least put it in your own words.

The docs are definitely copyrighted. Same as if you wrote a blog post and they copied it, it would be copyright infringement.Otonomo sounds like a deeply unethical and shady company. If I was doing any kind of business with them I would not continue to do so. While it would be hard to sue them, hopefully when you Google them in the future the fact they ripped of Smartcar will be one of the first results.

As it turns out, probably nothing. Their API docs are apparently open source.

Can someone explain me what illegality did they do?Is it illegal to just copy some docs from somewhere on the web?are APIs copyrightable?

&gt; The only way forward for Bessemer et al. VCs is to immediately withdraw their funding for this “company” and cut all ties in order to prove that they had no forewarning that this is how their money was being used.I mean, you might eventually be right. But why &quot;immediately&quot;? What&#x27;s wrong with taking some time to talk to people, hear the other side, find out more details, do a proper investigation, and then decide what to do?One side of a story is never the whole story.

Holy crap. The only way forward for Bessemer et al. VCs is to immediately withdraw their funding for this “company” and cut all ties in order to prove that they had no forewarning that this is how their money was being used. There are so few actors this visibly bad that if they didn’t do anything they would become “that guy” everybody avoids, in both the deals and funding space, when orgs do their due diligence.So they could choose to not do anything, which means the only companies approaching them in the future are the desperate ones, and they lose the capital anyways to the markets due to a shoddy portfolio.Don’t knife your intangibles.

A lazy company—one that gets the job done expending the least unnecessary resources—is what investors want.Playing fast and loose with the law—whether it&#x27;s competitors legal interests or regulatory conpliance—is often part of the economy of disruption.

I hope the VC notices this. At best they invested in a lazy company. At worst, fraudsters.If they actually believe the idea has merit, they should do right by Otonomo.

I am sorry to hear that but it is does not really surprise me. I bet they will just rewrite their docs a little bit and then go on with their business.Amazing that they have 55M$ in funding and still hire a bunch of amateurs. I bet the design for their docs is based on some free online template too because it looks very cheap.I wish you all luck!

See Oracle vs Google.[1] It&#x27;s not as simple a question as it might seem. Google is currently appealing to the Supreme Court.1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Goog...</a>.

You can&#x27;t copyright an API, right? What are you asking them to stop doing in the c&amp;d? Copying the website and documentation?

Welcome to the world of startups: I hope you developed some secret sauce!

But you can understand the outrage: now two sets of developers can do this.I&#x27;m still getting over the fact I upgraded the radio on my car back in 2010 with a USB stick and using the driver&#x27;s side door to control the process. I think a well-documented API that shows exactly how my car is vulnerable is a step up.

I got stuck at &quot;Developers can read our docs and use our API to locate or even unlock a car’s doors with just a few lines of code&quot;

Ah good old Rocket Internet. Used to deal quite a lot with them back in the days.For all the ethically ambiguous things they do, I still remember fondly their creative ways of using AdTech.

I heard the model was to actually sell the European copy to the original US startup as it got bigger. It was never in their interest to end up operating an actual company. This backfired on them for one of their &quot;investments&quot; (I think an Airbnb clone?) when the US counterpart decided to go head and head against the Rocket&#x27;s copy in Europe instead of simply acquiring.

&gt; German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rocket_Internet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Rocket_Internet</a>

I&#x27;d take money over flattery any day though.

Agreed. It sounds like a case of &quot;this looks good, let&#x27;s follow their format&quot; and revising words&#x2F;paragraphs just enough so you won&#x27;t be blamed for plagiarism. The API parameters are very generic so it shouldn&#x27;t be considered cloning.

&gt; but in reality the only thing that was copied was the docs for the API, not the API itselfYou 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 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

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.

The actual saying is &quot;imitation is the sincerest form of flattery&quot;. Sorry, but it&#x27;s a pet peeve of mine when people replace &quot;sincerest&quot; with &quot;best&quot;, because it changes the point of the adage.

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&#x27;d imagine Smartcar would have grounds for a legal case. If Oracle is awarded damages from Google for &quot;copying&quot; the Java API specification in Android, even with a different underlying implementation, then I&#x27;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&#x27;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.

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

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&#x27; API verbatim in order to get customers to port their applications more easily...

So they&#x27;re making a compatible API. I would consider this a good thing.

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&#x27;d realize the old axiom of imitation is the best form of flattery.

&gt; Since the ability to get a foreign company (in this case Israeli) to do anything is limitedDoesn’t hurt to have a court order in place. Chances are they’ll settle for a material fraction of the cash you know they have.

At $55M in funding they won’t be undercutting anything - quite the opposite, they’ll need to turn a healthy profit or die.

I tend to agree with the original comment, particularly for products that are still evolving.We have a competitor who copies our features, but they don&#x27;t know why we built the feature. The result is they end up copying the wrong stuff or tweaking the feature in a way that completely misses the point.But, I agree with you in that creating a feature isn&#x27;t an advantage in and of itself. Rather, it is the domain expertise that led to the creation of the feature that is the true advantage.

Then can&#x27;t you too find other investor for yourself ? You have the advantage being the one that come out with the idea to sell it to the investor.Or heck pitch it to the same investor too.

What I find a bit crazy is why don&#x27;t large corporations do this more often?  I literally told my manager when I worked at Corel that we should do this: Find a promising looking startup, clone their offering and blow them out of the water by virtue of the fact that we have 500 sales and marketing people with 20 years of experience (not to mention by being second to the market we can learn how to avoid all the legacy problems the startup endured).  We were in a &quot;new ventures&quot; team and I figured instead of going along with cockamamie schemes dreamed up by our PGMs that had virtually no hope of success, we should enter markets that had at least some advance proven success.  Nope.  Not going to happen.  We needed to build something that nobody had ever thought of before.  While I can understand the idea, I still think its a massive mistake for an established company.  Why enter markets where you can&#x27;t play to your strengths (muscle)?  I never could figure it out...

And this is exactly why software patents are not as evil as most people think.They are being abused, but if you can close that loophole (prevent non practicing entities from enforcing patents), then software patents are critical to protect innovation.

OTOH, if a company can only sustain its business model because it has the advantage of state protection, it necessarily means naturally defensible business products get less investment and artificially defensible business products get a bump. Which is better, is hard to say.It should be clear however that patent and patent giving has massive costs on the state and a great boon to lawyers.And at the same time, its still not enough, as you still need to do counter-espionage at companies anyway.

&gt;The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn&#x27;t.I have to disagree with you emphasizing this point. If someone&#x2F;entity manages to get your idea or code, they may be able to sell the solution at a fraction of the cost since their R&amp;D was lower than yours. When the entity is 10x+ your size, they can also afford to gather the resources that increase their odds of success (e.g. marketing specialists, engineers,etc) at a rate which you can&#x27;t compete. By then, you may have spent 2-3 years creating a business that is destroyed by an external entity acting in bad faith.These things happen quite often.

But when &quot;the Chinese&quot; do the same thing, the reactions always seem to include something about &quot;cheating&quot;, &quot;stealing&quot;, and &quot;copying&quot; being &quot;ingrained to their &#x27;culture&#x27;&quot;, complete with some irrelevant anecdotes about some bad experience with Chinese tourists&#x2F;coworkers&#x2F;schoolmates or some geopolitical event being shared in the thread as if people are submitting their victim impact statements.This phenomenon appears to be unique to situations where the accused party is Chinese. No other nationality&#x2F;ethnicity seem to suffer the same treatment on HN and elsewhere on the Internet.

There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.The Chinese also do this. (As in, the government seems to encourage it outright.) The culture and language barrier do make for an effective moat. It usually takes significant effort and even some cultural change for a company to get its legs for international operation.

Also, while I appreciate this is a name and shame, it might help to put your company&#x27;s name in the title and not give Otonomo the free exposure for anyone who&#x27;s not going to dig into the article.

Right or wrong is relative. If to me this is not wrong then what are you gonna do about it.

&gt; This isn&#x27;t difficult: stealing and copying API design and API documentation is wrong.Copying APIs is fine, as far as I&#x27;m concerned.The world is as better place if hardware and software is compatible with each other, and common interfaces enable that.

&gt; its also par for the courseNo, it is not. The world would be a much better place if we all started doing what is right. This isn&#x27;t difficult: stealing and copying API design and API documentation is wrong.Make a note of the company, people who work there, and VCs who invested. Computers are good at quickly finding information: one day you might want to do business with one of those people or VCs and digging up this information might change your mind.

I think you are referring to these rip-off merchants:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.co.uk&#x2F;article&#x2F;inside-the-clone-factory" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.co.uk&#x2F;article&#x2F;inside-the-clone-factory</a><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;ryanmac&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;31&#x2F;samwer-brothers-billionaires-rocket-internet-ipo&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;ryanmac&#x2F;2014&#x2F;07&#x2F;31&#x2F;samwer-broth...</a>

I think their first startup was an eBay clone called alando.de which was later sold to eBay when they entered the German market (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Samwer-Brüder#Alando" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;de.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Samwer-Brüder#Alando</a> in German)

&gt;Companies have been known to talk about expensive and complicated features or options in order to get people trying to copy their success to waste time and money on something for which there is no actual demand.Anyone know of a specific documented example of this? I&#x27;m not really doubting, just interested.

Rocket Internet: they copied Airbnb with Wimdu and wasted 90 M in the process.

This is commonly called the second mover advantage. If they do not have some special sauce that prevents an easy copy of their idea then it was going to happen sooner or later.

NO! Rocket Internet is known and have been busted for straight up copying even website source code, layout, everything. As in the source of the HTML is identical, just the color scheme changed. They are criminals make no mistake, learn how they got their riches, by scamming teenagers with ringtones.

&quot;Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.&quot;This is really a different case though.The German VC is saying: &quot;Food delivery is working in the US, they&#x27;ve validated the model + EU VC&#x27;s will now get behind that, so &#x27;do that like they are&#x27;.They are more or less competing, not exactly cloning.Copying API&#x27;s is a whole other level.Literally copying docs etc. is another level.The thing is - the small company may have some power here. The bigger company does not want an ugly, permanent lawsuit hanging over them. With the screen-scraping and blatant copying, it&#x27;s going to make it seem, at least popularly bad, and possibly add emotive impetus to a judge. The copier cannot say with a straight face that they were not copying to a judge.

Addressing this case, for an Israeli company, infringing a US patent implies death. First, there&#x27;s no &quot;Israel market&quot;, US is the market. Second, there goes any chance of future funding. Last, a company s.a otonomo has one way out - acquisition. Say goodbye to that too.

&gt; Also, love them or hate them, having patents helps in situations like these.Does it though? There is no global patent authority. If the ripoff is not for the US market, only a patent for their market will help. Which might be impossible to get in the first place.

&gt; But if Company B can execute a similar concept faster and better than Company A, that&#x27;s ultimately better for society.Only in the short term. In the longer term, it may no longer be worth the risk for any Company A to begin in the first place.

Will they be able to maintain and improve the code the way the people who wrote it will? The risk is that Company B may be selling something they don&#x27;t fully understand.

Copying as a business model is pretty shitty as is copying legitimate IP. But if Company B can execute a similar concept faster and better than Company A, that&#x27;s ultimately better for society.This situation looks very egregious though.

You&#x27;re thinking of the Samwer brothers, w&#x2F; successful explicit clones of extant businesses.

That German VC company contacted us to talk about partnering, learnt as much as they could from us and then (not to my surprise) launched their clone of our company with $42m backing.

The German VC firm you refer to is Rocket Internet aka the Samyer Brothers. They cloned every startup they could find for a while.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehustle.co&#x2F;rocket-internet-oliver-samwer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thehustle.co&#x2F;rocket-internet-oliver-samwer</a>

They and their founding brothers are fricking leeches and deserve prison for life!

That German company was Rocket Internet. They IPO&#x27;d Jumia last week on US markets.Love them, hate them, never underestimate them.Whether you are creating, disrupting, stealing, copying or cheating... just be the best at it. There is reward for that.

&gt;There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.Rocket internet, clone then sell to the U.S. company when they expand.That&#x27;s not the same as copying their manuals,code or other copyright though.It&#x27;s more akin to lyft to uber.

That is pretty egregious, and its also par for the course.And that is why startup companies go through all the hoops of being &quot;stealth&quot; and having NDAs and what not. There was a German VC firm that was, as I recall, very upfront about this. Clone a successful US company before it got to the European market.On the one hand it is great to have validation of the idea, on the other its a pain to have someone with more money in the bank able to spend it on marketing and spinning the narrative in their favor.Since the ability to get a foreign company (in this case Israeli) to do anything is limited, your best bet is to out execute them. Also, love them or hate them, having patents helps in situations like these.The reality is that if an idea is really good, the people who came up with it know it better than anyone and that gives them a tremendous advantage in terms of knowing what is important and what isn&#x27;t. Companies have been known to talk about expensive and complicated features or options in order to get people trying to copy their success to waste time and money on something for which there is no actual demand. It is no doubt worth investing in understanding how one&#x27;s enemies are getting their information and shutting that off if possible.

documentation is protected under copyright.

And not all value is capturable under copyright. If you want this level of capture of value, use patents instead.

This isn&#x27;t (only) about copyright on APIs; it&#x27;s also about copyright on the API docs.

I agree with you completely, but Oracle vs Google is still going through the courts on this exact issue - copyright on APIs. I&#x27;ve seen product roll-outs delayed because that case isn&#x27;t settled yet. For VCs to jump in knowing that&#x27;s what this was seems risky, but maybe they factored that in.

So they built a new product to a competitor&#x27;s API spec? There is nothing wrong with that, the API itself is a plug - you need to implement the backend to compete.It is super lame and dumb to have ripped off their doc, but the API format itself is not an issue to me. If I were going to implement a competitor to Google Maps, it would make sense to copy the Maps API so people can migrate seamlessly. That is the nature of SaaS.The core value proposition is not in API design, it&#x27;s in the implementation.

This is bad, but not quite as bad as it could be: they have tons of money and are ripe for the plucking due to their incredible stupidity at ripping you off in this blatant manner.Lawyer up and take them to the cleaners.

It would be (morbidly? Sadochistically? I lack the term) interesting to watch how many people jump ship in a situation like this.

Otonomo management will have an even worse day when they realize that they are not indemnified just because someone works for them. They will likely have to kiss a substantial portion of that money goodbye as compensation in whatever settlement will be reached. Their lawyers will not be able to win this one from what I&#x27;ve read and seen so far so the best they will be able to achieve is to settle before it gets to court, fighting this will only make it much more expensive.OP should figure out if the public stuff is all that was ripped or if it went further, it would not be the first time that an ex employee made off with a copy of the company crown jewels.

You may not hear anything right away, but someone who works for (or was outsourced by) Otonomo is currently having a Very Bad Day.

Sell your rights to sue them to those Texas class action lawyers and call it a day.

This is obviously terrible, inexcusable behavior...However, I expected to see that SmartCar (which somehow is not a trademark violation against the BMW marque?) was a scrappy indie startup being violated by a company backed by serious institutional money.TL;DR; Smartcar is backed by NEA and A16Z. (Crunchbase says they have raised $12mm, which would likely put them comfortably in the top 1% of companies by capital raised.) This is a spat between two well-funded and well-backed companies.None of this is to excuse the behavior of the Israeli company, just recognizing that the violated company probably has access to more levers than most to fix this.

I am sorry. Maybe your Harry Potter example is &quot;obvious&quot;, but the case in the blog post is not obvious to me at all. I don&#x27;t see any verbatim copied documentation. &quot;overall structure&quot;? Hey, the overall structure of almost any api doc is pretty much the same. All I see is similar API, which is not copyrightable, and identical randomly generated identifiers - and it&#x27;s not obvious to me that it constitutes copyright infringement.Let&#x27;s not do witch-hunting.

It&#x27;s obviously not the same thing because the only parts that were verbatim copied are some property descriptions for the OAuth 2.0 protocol. Maybe 100 words or so. This whole thing was blown way out of proportion.

No. If I photocopy the Harry Potter books, change the name on the covers, and sell them as my own, that is obviously illegal. This is the same thing, and nobody needs to wait for the courts to say that it is illegal.

&quot;is illegally cloning our product&quot;isn&#x27;t it for the court to establish?

As someone who worked for one and is originally from Israel, I can tell you it is, absolutely, 100% true. No one in Israel is interested in managing or building a large company and they all want to exit as soon as possible.

Also Israeli, can also back this up.
There are a handful of Israeli startups trying to build a large companies.
There are exceptions, and large one at those. But it&#x27;s the common mentality.

&gt; I don&#x27;t have any data to back it up but majority of Israeli startups have one goal: to be acquired...As someone that worked for one, and knows enough people that work in other Israeli startups, I can tell you it isn&#x27;t true.True, some startups get acquired, but no more then any other place (the only difference I see is that in some tech areas Israeli talent is considered very good, so when looking for an acquisition, big corps are probably more likely to go for the Israeli options)

I don&#x27;t have any data to back it up but majority of Israeli startups have one goal: to be acquired (and are extremely good at marketing them to acquiring companies and investors). So continue your product and in a couple of years time, they would have been acquired and the product put on back burner by the acquiring company.

The C&amp;D letter mentioned in the post probably already alerted them.

Ah just the uplifting words op needed for the battle ahead.

Nothing to blow. This is not illegal.That&#x27;s why they wrote it up as a blog post and are trying to garner PR from it.

You blew it. By posting this article and getting to the top of Hackernews you may have alerted their attention and they may rapidly change everything to not seem like copyright infringement. Then you might have weak or no claims.

Every single instance of professional plagiarism that I’ve encountered in my working career has been techpubs&#x2F;documentation. And that has been exponentially more common for outsourced documentation.Even solid companies like Arista got bitten by their doc writers cloning Cisco documentation.So while this sucks, the most likely explanation for the evidence presented is at that layer.

This is obviously frustrating, but do not focus on it. They were wrong and lazy to blatantly copy, but would it really make a difference if they spent an extra couple hours with a few copy&#x2F;css changes to make it look more unique?Unfortunately, the market does not care about who had what first. This is a validation for you. Frustrating validation. You likely do not have the resources to fight them for anything meaningful. Stay focused on your customers.

Look who the investors are, go to person&#x27;s similar in the same niche.Go for funding, your idea is already validates.

No judge would agree to that as damages.The smart car documentation is worth some amount of money. But there is no way in hell that it is worth 10 million dollars.In law, there is this concept of &quot;damages&quot;. Smartcar did not get lose 10 million dollars because a company stole their docs.

If they go down this route, SmartCar should ask for at least their post-money valuation based on their last $10M raise back in March 2018[1], not just a &quot;couple of million&quot;.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;smartcar#section-overview" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crunchbase.com&#x2F;organization&#x2F;smartcar#section-ove...</a>

A lot of good advice on here. Let me add another point, maybe just consider negotiating an acquisition.Yes, it does kind of suck they stole your idea. But the fact that they have $55 million in funding, probably means they&#x27;re willing to buy you out for a couple million. One, just to avoid any legal issues. Two, because you&#x27;ve already done a lot of work on the problem.Maybe it&#x27;s worth fighting. But maybe it&#x27;s also worth considering getting a multi-million dollar payday, and moving on to something else.

I think the de facto standard for creating API docs based on code is to use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;swagger.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;swagger.io&#x2F;</a>

For GraphQL I like graph2doc. I assume if you follow a different API spex exactly you&#x27;ve got many options that do exactly what this package does.

While we built ours in house using a few open source frameworks, we do highly recommend <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;readme.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;readme.io</a>

What kind of tools are used to create API Docs like this?I made a dev-focused SaaS and struggle to find a good way to document API&#x27;s directly via the codebase, so that code changes can be reflected automatically in the docs.

&gt; I am no Paul Graham, but I think you are wasting your time. Let&#x27;s say you win the case next Tuesday and the judge miraculously orders them to shut shop.The judge won&#x27;t order them to “shut shop”, but to pay damages. Though it will obviously take longer than next Tuesday (but the real objective is to use the likelihood of a verdict and the harm on both sides to secure a pretrial settlement which either involves stopping and compensation or just more compensation that amounts to a buyout.)

&quot;Expecting the world to be fair with us because we are fair, is like expecting the lion not to eat us because we didn&#x27;t eat him&quot; - Paul GrahamI am no Paul Graham, but I think you are wasting your time. Let&#x27;s say you win the case next Tuesday and the judge miraculously orders them to shut shop. They dissapear on Thursday. Then what?You still wake up next Friday with 99% of the problems (and opportunities) you had, before you &quot;came across Otonomo’s publicly available API documentation&quot; a few days ago.If there&#x27;s still a little voice inside your head that&#x27;s sayin - Paul Graham didn&#x27;t say that, you are missing the f*ing point. Start over.

In this case hate the game and the players.

Remote teams can be responsible for both implementation and documentation.I’m not saying that’s what happened here necessarily, but I’ve seen this pattern repeated before (less egregiously). Founders can only do so much and most people are completely ignorant of the value of a good API, so it’s not hard for an executive team to say, “make it like that other one,” instead of staffing out the proper team.

Hi, I&#x27;m the CEO of Smartcar. While I can&#x27;t go into exact details, I can say from what we know so far: this occurred out of their main headquarters.

&gt; What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking.If a remote team is writing your API documentation by copying and pasting, then what is the actual implementation team building from?

And randomly generated UUIDs from code examples.

But we don&#x27;t know that, do we? They only showed some auth code. The OP does _not_ show that Otonomo has duplicated any business APIs, and Otonomo took their docs down. Unless someone has proof Otonomo copied more than just the examples documented in the OP, this is just pure PR fluff.

&gt; What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly.They didn&#x27;t steal the docs (not only the docs). They stole the whole public facing architecture as evidenced by the fact that they are using in some instances the exact same API resources names and method names.

That&#x27;s quite an assumption that they just paid a remote team to do that and their management overlooked it.

Smartcar has raised $12M in financing from A16Z and NEA. The difference between $12M and $55M is a single financing stage.What likely happened here is a remote team was paid to generate docs with a directive like, “Smartcar has a good API,” and stole them directly. Then the management team didn’t bother checking.This is great PR for Smartcar all things considered, and I actually think has a fantastic silver lining:The value of a good API isn’t the API itself. It’s the expertise of designing them. APIs are difficult, the majority of the industry sucks at designing and delivering them. Otonomo can always copy you, but if you have the actual expertise to continually deliver a fantastic API experience you will win in the long-term. Stripe and Twilio are your proof points. Go get ‘em, team.Bessemer invested in Twilio and they know this, and the Otonomo team just showed them that they’re incompetent in the API space. So — I think you’ve got a bigger leg up than you think.

yes I meant I didn&#x27;t see anything very old.I meant that it&#x27;s just copying the API format (e.g. probably to make migrating from the other service easy) which isn&#x27;t uncommon (e.g. most of AWS services copied APIs)

Actually, many of the otonomo docs were saved to web.archive.org, last week:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;*&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;*" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;*&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;*</a>And many were saved to archive.fo today:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.fo&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io</a>The screenshots look accurate to me, what discrepancies do you see?

not sure how to formulate it but wouldn&#x27;t a great execution be very hard to reproduce? looks like it&#x27;s copying the external API.also looking at the other company documentation, it&#x27;s different from the screenshots: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;getting-started" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;docs.otonomo.io&#x2F;docs&#x2F;getting-started</a> (archive.org history is quite limited so may have been scrubbed)edit: yes those &quot;screenshots&quot; are very disingenuous: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;api#introduction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;smartcar.com&#x2F;docs&#x2F;api#introduction</a>

Some may call it &#x27;outsourcing&#x27;.

Does this mean I can sell a car and then unlock (steal) it? :)

At a certain startup i worked at, we decided to rip off some random strings from a competitors docs, solely to make them think we ripped them off. In truth, we started on the product at the same time of them and waited for them to launch first to use their press and marketing against them.

Slight tangent but can you “copyright” a REST API or UI? Sure, the endpoints and look can be copied but the secret is the implementation, no?

In some ways it reminds one of the Google&#x2F;Oracle API thing -- most of us didn&#x27;t _want_ the API itself (the method signatures or &#x27;shapes&#x27;) to be copyrightable or otherwise protectable as IP (as the law seemed to say it _wasn&#x27;t_ until the Google&#x2F;Oracle case).However, copying the _docs_ like that is a clear copyright violation, always has been, still is, not really a legal gray area, I don&#x27;t know what the heck Otonomo was thinking, and I hope they get their hat handed to them.

No, verbatim copying of the docs, API or not, is obviously not right. However if they are claiming to aim for API standardization, the specs should be in public domain from the start.

Facebook&#x27;s cloning of Snapchat&#x27;s features is legal.If they&#x27;d copied Snapchat&#x27;s &quot;how to use &lt;feature&gt;&quot; documentation verbatim, typos and all, that&#x27;d have been a copyright violation.

Exactly, I don&#x27;t understand what is their objection.Since when copying some API docs is illegal? We don&#x27;t even know yet if API are copyrightable, right?Ever since Facebook copied snapchat&#x27;s features like it was nothing it became clear for everyone that the best clone will win. You have a product? Expect a clone of it.To me this post is just &quot;they stole my idea&quot; whining.

&gt; We created a standard API for cars.What do they mean by &quot;standard&quot; here if they object to this API being copied?The very goal of API standardization is to have a common interface for TWO parts to talk to each other in a consistent manner. An API that through whatever means allows for only one specific backend doesn&#x27;t really qualify for being a &quot;standard&quot;.&gt; How Otonomo is illegally cloning our productSo am I to understand that the API spec is their product?Or is their API not as standard as they claim?Can&#x27;t have your cake and eat it too.

Initial disclaimer that I might be wrong about this and the space in generalHave they cloned the API docs or the entire product? Copying API docs is stupid but I can see how that would have been done in a hurry.However, if I were building a Saas product with an API and a competitor to a popular tool who has it, I will deliberately keep the basic functions as similar to ensure seamless transition. Its not about uniqueness but moving fast. Companies which might want to switch will have it easier given they wont have to change their code much, and by extension can be deployed faster, and I will try to sell them on the features we offer extra over the competitors.I am not sure about copyright&#x2F;patent infringement so cant comment about that. Part of what I wrote above might not be allowed, but maybe mentioning explicitly might be ok .

The tone of the post is that way. The comments here suggest quite the opposite.

When Google clones the java API&#x27;s the tone here is that API&#x27;s are not protected and Oracle are evil gold diggers. Now an Israeli startup copies API&#x27;s from another startup and the tone here is completely the opposite. What&#x27;s up?

I used to have these feelings as well.I&#x27;m soon to be jumping into a crowded market as well. Many of my competitors have had VC funding and do billions per year.It doesn&#x27;t bother me in the slightest. I can be far more nimble than they can. Doesn&#x27;t matter if they try and stomp me. A bigger company will always do something in their own interests and piss off a segment of their customer base which means they will move eventually.Not only that, because I don&#x27;t have VC funding. I can always have lower prices CapEx and move it OpEx instead. As long as I am much lower costs compared to being with the incumbents then it&#x27;s a better prospect cost wise to my customers.Finally, better customer service, features, ease of use, pricing and roi to the customer is what matters at the end of the day. If you simply have a much better product and able to generate and retain trust in your user base. You&#x27;ll be alright.My advice. Just start the business today. Whether or not you get stomped on is neither here or there. What matters most is the experience you&#x27;ll get vs in 5 years time when you wish you had started and still scared!

This almost scares me away from even trying to start a business - I have no idea how to compete if someone with more money tries to steal it. It seems the solutions are:
1. Do some accelerator to get connections and money.
2. Just do it and hope you don&#x27;t get stomped.

I wish they identified Otonomo&#x27;s IP address and served them a different (inaccurate) version of the product to copy instead.

&gt; 0facda3319That&#x27;s bad for sure.However, most &quot;Oauth2 flow&quot; documentation pages look like that. They all have a table that&#x27;s basically copied out of the Oauth2 spec. They all have very similar language.This is a good thing. Oauth2 is a well defined spec, and there just isn&#x27;t a lot of ambiguity there.If it weren&#x27;t for the copied random state, I&#x27;d shrug this off.

Is there a name and shame site ... other than HN ?

Being in the authentication&#x2F;authorization space for a while, this couldn&#x27;t be truer.  If OAuth 2.0 was a compelling differentiator from your API standpoint, they are doing it wrong.

This just looks like an OAuth flow, which is rather standard.It&#x27;s not a good example to use of someone stealing an API.

&gt; We created a standard API for cars.Does that not mean anyone else can use the API?

API usually have at least copyright protection, sometimes even license protection.Although I am not a huge fan of many of their business practices, Oracle has been quite successful in defending API copyright violations.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;searchoracle.techtarget.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2240220840&#x2F;Oracle-takes-on-Google-SAP-Comcast-in-copyright-protection-lawsuits" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;searchoracle.techtarget.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2240220840&#x2F;Oracle-t...</a>

It &quot;looks&quot; like they verbatim copy-pasted the documentation (and the api).

I was expecting another company copying the core business logic based off the title, but it looks like things related to redirect and auth are very (very) similar.Nearly every API is going to need solutions for these, and they all look very similar. I&#x27;d be surprised if the redirect and auth parts weren&#x27;t at least in some way inspired by other APIs.

&quot;I cloned a sheep&quot; does not imply &quot;I am a clone of a sheep&quot; or &quot;The only thing I have ever done is clone sheep&quot;.

I sort of feel that if the worst thing you can find is that someone stole your registration or OAuth documentation, you&#x27;re a bit over-exaggerating.And to say that someone is cloning your startup when they only (supposedly) stole the documentation is extreme in any case, especially when they&#x27;re not really a very new startup, so it&#x27;s not like you can claim everything they did was just copy from you.

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