When does imitation become duplication?
Written by on Thursday, April 26, 2007 – 10:17 am -It has been said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but at what point does imitation go to far and become duplication? Is there a difference between the two? I believe there is. It is one thing to build a product that is strikingly similar to an existing product (imitation) but it is something entirely different when you build a product that is an exact carbon copy of an existing product (duplication).
If you are the first to market with a new product, obviously there is going to be an onslaught of very similar products to follow. For example, Digg launches and then come Reddit and Netscape (for awhile).You could even makethe arguement that Twitter has spawned a few imitation plays as well, notably Facebook expanding their status area to be more Twitter like. This is all fine and good because it is imitation. The number of “new” ideas is shrinking and shrinking and if you think you have a “new” idea, chances are there are several players out there already doing the same thing.
There is a point, however, where it is very obvious that a company has crossed over that imitation line and has produced a duplicate of something of something else. For instance, YEurope has just recently launched, and it is an exact duplicate of YCombinator, the innovative incubator fund. Not only did they copy the YCombinator name, but they went as far as making the main page and the applicaiton submission form look exactly like YCombinator. Is this going to far, have any legal lines been crossed? What goes through a company’s mind when they come to the realization that what they are about to launch is an exact duplicate of something that already exists? See the screen shots for an example:
So, is this a problem or is it just the nature of the world in which we live in? Thoughts?
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Will Kern's take on business, startups, life and everything in between. This blog is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I think it’s telling that they’ve duplicated Y Combinator lock, stock, and barrel; they’re not creative, but they recognize a good thing when they see it.
That said, how can more seed capital for more small companies be anything but a good thing? I’d rather see $100 million spent $25K at a time on hundreds of companies than $100 million spent on two or three spectacular flare-out failures.
April 26th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Very true, I guess they recognized a good thing, but at least they should have tried not to duplicate them completely. With that being said, I agree that the more seed money the better, and doling it out $25k at a time gives more startups at least a fighting chance (provided you get accepted). Based on your screen name, I take it you did not make it all the way through?
This post was not specifically about YEurope, I was just using them as an example, there are many others that I could have used, they just happened to be fresh in my mind, since a lot has been written about them lately.
Will