

If you build something original, would pride normally prevent others from copying you? - amichail

And if your idea turns out to be a good one, perhaps by then you would have a first-mover advantage anyway?<p>Moreover, if people do copy you, then they are in a way helping you by promoting your original idea.<p>I guess the question here is whether IP protection is really necessary and whether discussing your ideas in public is a reasonable thing to do.
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tracer
As it's always been said, idea's are a dime-a-dozen, it's the implimentation
that counts. If someone copies you then you just have to out do them with
better features or support. My feeling, is if you're trying to prevent someone
from competing with you, you may win in the short run, but in the long run
you'll probably lose.

By trying to stop other people from competing against you it diverts your
time, energy, and resources to something that could be better used to make
your product better. Lets say you are successful and you stop the person from
competing directly with you, two other projects might pop up that do the same
or similar tasks that your project does. Now you'll have to go after them, ad
infinitum.

Next, while this won't affect your customers it may affect your investors or
possible community which you have gained. Some people may take your attack as
being childish or as being a weakness to your person. Your reputation may
suffer as an end result and you'll lose the confidence of your investors and
the community you built up may leave because they don't like your attitude.

It's a touchy subject and I'm not the most knowledgeable person as I've never
really been in this situation. However, I've always felt it's better to just
push on. Competition is good for you and the customers. While you may feel
like it's harming your bottom line, you'll probably end up with a much better
product that will prevent a much larger corporation with much more resources
from entering your market bruteforce because you have a battle-tested product
with a good amount of features.

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andhapp
I will just give a simple example: Apple released iPhone and it was a
tremendous hit all over the world. All other phone companies tried to copy
it...outcome...not as successful. Reason: because these companies do not have
the vision, passion, dedication for the product. So even if someone takes your
idea it does not mean they will be able to deliver it better.

Au Contraire: Google produced a better search engine to other present at the
time of launch like Alta Vista and Lycos.

To summarise, if you have an original idea executed nicely customers would
come to you.

