Having your idea copied is always a possibility Wednesday, March 28, 2007
I was out watching the (dire) England football match tonight in a bar in the West End of London. During the long walk round trying to find a pub with Sky Sports (very few left these days which surprised me - presumably as a consequence of the charges), I was outlining to my chum some of the ventures we are involved in. He is a senior exec at a large hedge fund and was intrigued by a) the possibility of the ventures being emulated and b) our ventures being ripped off by the large companies, who we often try to partner with for distribution purposes, by having their idea copied.
I explained that in some cases technology barriers or first mover advantage may give us a head start etc, and also referred to my recent blog post about big companies being generally hopeless at rapidly responding to change/innovation. For good measure, I also lobbed in the reputation risk that big companies may run if they plagiarise ideas from pitches - aside from being bad mouthed, they may be excluded from seeing future big ideas!
So it was with some interest that tonight I read about Peasy, which looks almost identical to Parkatmyhouse which I recently wrote about, and which offers a service advertising offers and demand for parking spaces.
Is there any recourse? Almost certainly not. Is it legal? Yes. Can I stop it? No. So what should you do in this situation? Be the best and make sure people know it, love it and proclaim it.
posted by John Wilson @ 11:42 PM Permanent Link
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