

China's going to copy us. Should we care? - ccvannorman

We&#x27;ve developed an innovative, unique IP which we are in the process of getting a US patent for. When our customers use the product it&#x27;s obvious we are leagues ahead of the competition, but we&#x27;re still small, and won&#x27;t be at a scaling stage for another year (it&#x27;s a slow industry).<p>A partner of ours is using one of our products for cross promotional purposes in China, which will give us a lot of early exposure there. I&#x27;m certain someone in China will see our product and copy it. Should we care?<p>Possible results
A) They copy it and saturate the China market, we get US and Europe, compete for India in 2016.
B) They copy it and do a ton of free research for us in China, so that when we&#x27;re ready to move there, we can jump ahead of them and retake the market.
C) I&#x27;m overestimating the risk and nothing or very little will happen.<p>Thoughts? Has this happened to anyone else?
======
zxwing
Copier will be your follower forever, not leader. If one day the copier passes
you, it means you are not a real leading innovator in this area, the copier(in
your words) is. I think you are overestimating the risk. Keep your own pace,
focus on your customer, don't put too much time worrying about potential
copier

~~~
ccvannorman
thanks - this is my intuition as well .. :-]

------
mp4box
Saw this on HN couple of days ago

[http://formdevices.com/blog/No-Fools-
Errand.html](http://formdevices.com/blog/No-Fools-Errand.html)

