Ask HN: Competitor Snooping and Stealing Our Designs. What Should I Do

[DJN]

I run a young, exciting ad technology startup and today, one of our competitors struck a deal with a very large tech blog. I've never heard of them so naturally I visited their site to check them out.

I noticed that there were many design touches on their site that looked similar to ours. I also dug up an old screenshot of their site and it loooked just like an old screenshot of ours. What the heck?

Should I call them out? The gentleman in me says no. Immitation is the best complement, I guess. Besides, it is essentially my word against theirs so there may be no point. It is just a bit hard to stomach all this plagiarism given that we've been bootstrapping, hustling, making and learning from mistakes and another bootstapper has just bootlegged our work.

Their terms and conditions looks like the old T&C we used with our original business model. We've evolved the business model ever since and of course, they have as well. So right now, their existing T&C doesn't even apply to their business.

Have you ever experienced anything like this? What did you do or suggest we do?

[medianama]

There isn't much you can do to stop others from copying your work. The only thing that you can do however is to execute better than them... Stay focused and execute better.

[cottsak]

Never experienced it myself (with my site/business) but i have observed it a little.

My (humble) suggestion: Your product/service/business is likely to thrive (you've already said your T&C has 'evolved' since their copy) and given the ever-changing properties of this tech sphere - change rapidly! Design/aesthetics/marketing material and the like are great, but it's your customer service that's going to keep business - so focus on that. If you update your site design and it’s copied again, dont worry. Like you said: it must be good right? The value you offer to your customers is you - your service, your passion and your values. That can’t really be copied - well, not effectively. Focus on the things that matter. Sure it might hurt to be stolen from, but rise above. Your customers will notice.

[DJN]

Thanks medianama, cottsak and Daniel_Newby.

You echo my thoughts. Good customer service trumps everything else. They can't execute better than us if all they do is copy our ideas. It's like an iPhone clone being better than the iPhone. Without the original vision, it'll always be second best.

We'll focus on providing great customer service. At least, that can't be copied. :)

[Daniel_Newby]

Ignore it. You might have a modest case for copyright violation for duplication of pages. However, prosecuting it would waste money and man-hours that are best spent elsewhere, and also possibly frighten them into aggressive improvement. "Winning" would likely be a net loss.

Your best strategy is to let them coast and hope they are gradually left behind. If they developed a habit of laziness, don't help them break it!