from Hacker News

Taxi Surfer, From Pitch to Lawsuit in Five Days

by barrydahlberg on 4/7/11, 10:07 AM with 47 comments

  • by webwright on 4/7/11, 3:12 PM

    SO SO stupid (both sides). The original threatening email seems pretty silly. The response, by adopting that tone, making it public, etc., is a big "I DARE YOU" to the lawsuit-happy moron.

    The problem is, it's challenging to know just how rich or insane this person is, and they just publicly started bumping chests with him like a drunken teenager. Other than feeling smug, why is it a smart move to make this personal/emotional? Respectfully indicate that you disagree and request that further communication come from a lawyer.

    Also, by saying "We don't have a company, we're just a bunch of guys", you've said, "We don't have a corporate veil-- you can sue us DIRECTLY as individuals." Way to expose the jugular.

  • by wisty on 4/7/11, 12:02 PM

    I searched the letter, and can't find the word "patent" anywhere. Unless there is a patent involved, then the wannabe plaintif is relying on "Trade Secrets" (NDA), rather than patents to protect his turf, I'm pretty sure you can politely tell him to fuck off. (IANAL, this is not legal advice).

    I've heard that under certain circumstances, you can write a threatening letters, just to rattle the competition. Best get a lawyer to do it, as it sounds slightly credible, and they can make sure you don't actually do anything illegal, but you can often just quote legislation and "request" people back off ... it's just a request, right? The FBI did this to wikipedia, whose legal team sent a hilarious reply.

    It's an extremely bad idea if you have a patent they are infringing on (as direct threats will force them to counter-sue, or settle immediately, or face extra damages), but for most things you can talk as much legal smack-down as you want.

  • by lolizbak on 4/7/11, 11:28 AM

    We had the same adventure with a small dating product we launched in Feb: SecretPoke.com (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2179649).

    3 days after launch, we received a cease and desist letter from SecretementVotre (secretly yours, in french) asking us to basically close the service : http://www.businessinsider.com/secretpoke-secretementvotre-2...

    We had more fun than fear, and actually blogged about it. Even playing off with the title: SecretementVotre wants to screw up SecretPoke.

    Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. At any given time, 10+ people around the globe are thinking about the same revolutionizing ideas... The only difference between France and the US is that you cannot "protect" an idea in France... so nothing happened.

  • by ericHosick on 4/7/11, 11:16 AM

    What gets me on stuff like this is that for every one person who executes successfully and make something great there are hundreds of people waiting around to suckle off of that success.

  • by cperciva on 4/7/11, 1:46 PM

    Dumb people say dumb things. A few months ago I got an email demanding that I cease and desist from infringing on the author's patent application.

    Just file it in the loony bin and move on.

  • by trotsky on 4/7/11, 12:47 PM

    If I posted all the vague legal threats I've gotten over the Internet over the years I could come close to filling up the front page of HN. Only one ever came to any sort of legal action - a case was filed and then dropped a few months later without further comment.

    The appropriate response when dealing with folks that both don't have a lawyer and don't seem to have a case is to tell them to serve you and forget about it. They'll be forced to seek counsel, who will most likely explain to them the error of their ways. It's the kind of thing that doesn't work well when coming from you, for obvious social reasons.

    https://xkcd.com/386/

  • by alexjawad on 4/7/11, 11:07 AM

    "People have to realise that an idea is worth nothing. A good idea with great execution has value, but without this execution, it’s worthless. Getting an estimate for execution of an idea in 2009 does not grant you ownership of it."

    Bang on target!!

  • by pge on 4/7/11, 4:47 PM

    "Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference" -Mark Twain

  • by moeffju on 4/7/11, 12:09 PM

    This exact thing has been done quite a while ago, and it even looks very similar of course – http://www.mytaxi.net/

  • by barrydahlberg on 4/7/11, 10:08 AM

    These guys won the Auckland Startup Weekend down here in NZ at the start of the week, it's been entertaining viewing since.

  • by bugsy on 4/7/11, 4:28 PM

    Interesting. Sounds like he doesn't have a patent, no one at the other firm has ever had any contact with him, the idea is so obvious there are many companies with similar apps, and it's a conflict that crosses international borders and would cost an absolute fortune to pursue legally.

  • by Cushman on 4/7/11, 4:16 PM

    I'm a little leery of this: People have to realise that an idea is worth nothing.

    An idea is worth nothing in the sense that an idea can't make money by itself. There are still such things as better and worse ideas, and "your idea is worthless, so it's not stealing for me to use your idea" (a la http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2235218) feels like a pretty slimy use of the phrase.

    "You aren't the only one who can have good ideas, and you don't own an idea just because you had it first" seems like a much less judgmental way to say this.

  • by S_A_P on 4/7/11, 11:28 AM

    Funny thing is this sort of application was my first idea for iOS as soon as v 2.0 was released. It seems a natural use case for a location aware device. I just knew I didn't have the resources to properly execute it.

  • by acconrad on 4/7/11, 1:24 PM

    I wonder if that was his actual response to the email. While I think it's a great tone of voice for a blog (I loved it), I think there is a way to mitigate that situation and have you come out even better than you were before. Encourage them to build out their products and do it better than you. They will either fail to deliver and you've eliminated a competitor, or you can use his struggles to compete as ideas to generate if he happens to think of neat features you could implement as well. Never try to close doors you couldn't learn from by keeping open and exploring.

  • by personalcompute on 4/7/11, 11:56 AM

  • by ssharp on 4/7/11, 4:31 PM

    While the C&D likely had no merit, the snarky and insulting response was just as unnecessary. There was a mature and professional way to blow the guy's email off.

    Making this public makes Taxi Surfer look worse than the guy threatening to sue them.