

Indian Startup Lifeblob accuses Facebook of copying its feature - techhacker
http://www.pluggd.in/indian-startup-lifeblob-accuses-facebook-of-copying-its-feature-297/

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MicahWedemeyer
I copy features from other sites all the time. If you have a good idea, don't
be surprised if others replicate it, especially if it's technically easy.

What do you expect? Facebook will see it, say "That's cool!" and then offer
you a 20M buyout? Hell no, they'll just take a week, build it in-house, and
move on to the next feature.

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arihant
Lifeblob is an Indian company, even if they had a patent on this, it won't
work against Facebook, which is a US company (until they have a US patent and
Facebook is using same technique). Also, copyright infringement won't work
until Facebook uses the same code.

Moreover, Lifeblob has shot in their foot with this. Lifeblob's content is
hosted in US (Softlayer as host). If Facebook gets a patent on the
recommendation engine they and Lifeblob is using, they can issue a takedown
notice to Lifeblob from american servers.

Actions like Lifeblob's only end up destroying the web ecosystem.

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dctoedt
Re patents: If FB really did essentially 'copy' LB's feature (as opposed to
independently inventing it without having first known about it), then they
wouldn't be able to get a US patent. See 35 USC 102(f) at
<http://goo.gl/36yy>.

Even if FB did independently invent the feature, LB's US-hosted and US-
available feature might count as "prior art" that knocked out FB's ability to
get a patent.

Of course, much depends on just what FB would try to claim.

~~~
arihant
LB is an Indian company. If a US company and Indian company invent the same
thing regardless of chronological order and if each company takes patents in
their respective country, this can prohibit each company to operate in other's
country.

But you may be right. LB being hosted in US might well be qualified as
'operating in US', which might prevent FB getting patent in US.

In any case, if LB was so paranoid about someone stealing their 'photo
recommendation engine', they must have at the very least filed patent pending
applications in India and US.

LB's outburst suggest they are thinking of this as an infringement of some
sort, but these things won't work in web startups. How many countries will
anyone run around getting patents to make sure nobody else does it? Maybe, in
future we have better governing stuff for the web,

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psranga
Business is _NOT_ an exam. You can't call out people for "copying". Where did
Lifeblob get it's "photo sharing" idea from? Nah, can't be Flickr.

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kordless
I wrote similar code for my photo sharing startup at least 5 years ago.
Showing a photo's detail page and related photos based on tag and dates from
that photo is a fairly trivial task. I really don't see the big deal; surely
others have done something similar. They just weren't Facebook!

Now if someone had taken their name, changed a letter, then their logo and
made it 3D, and them built a big brand around it, then I'd say go sue their
asses off. But this? Seriously?

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evancaine
I find it unlikely that fb copied this feature. FB is in the content discovery
game (amongst other things). Once users are sharing photos, a likely next step
would be to help them discover photos from their friends and friends of
friends.

It's not just fb either. The idea of finding and presenting users with
associated content they would find interesting is a staple feature of most
social sites

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TallGuyShort
It's unreasonable for Lifeblob to say anything remotely negative about
Facebook copying their feature, when it's obvious from Lifeblob's UI that most
of their ideas have come from your typical social networking site. They even
use Facebook Connect!

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modeless
Good; I hope Facebook copies more useful features.

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khangtoh
<downvote me>Facebook in it's entirety was copied from ConnectU.</downvote
me>.

But back to the point of copying it's feature of associating related photos.
Everyone copies from everyone else, or putting it politely as "getting
inspiration from". This is the reality, no point whining about it. Take it as
a compliment and move on.

