Ask HN: Plagiarism Horror Stories

[serial_dev]

The recently released, controversial iPad "Crush" ad strongly resembles LG's 2008 advertisement [1]. Yesterday, there was a post [2] from a YC backed company that submitted a product that, many say, looked like a carbon copy of Linear, and even in their own words:

> We, too, are fans of Linear and appreciate its user experience (UX). After speaking with a lot of people, we concluded that it’s top-notch. Consequently, we wanted to give that experience rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel. [3]

Too many "plagiarism" (alleged or real, not for me to judge) stories within a day, so I wanted to use this occasion, to ask for your plagiarism horror stories:

* when you were shamelessly copied

* when you accidentally designed something that looks very much like an already existing design

* when taking inspiration from someone else vs copying elements of design became murky at your job

* when someone asked you to copy a competitors approach and you felt conflicted, or you had to reject doing so

* when you were accused of stealing a design even though you haven't

* when following what works for others is just the name of the game ("stories" and "shorts" taking over Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and even LinkedIn within a matter of months, spreadsheet apps looking the same, etc)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40314122

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40290735

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40306240

[leros]

I'm not really upset about this. I developed an MVP for a product. Not an entirely new idea, but a slightly new twist on the models of the existing competition. About a year later, there was a well-funded competitor doing exactly the same thing. They had millions of VC dollars and a large team compared to my solo effort. They replicated my architecture (which was somewhat novel) and I found remnants of my copy on their landing pages and in their docs. They leapfrogged me with a lot of hard work, but I am a little annoyed by it. I think in reality they just took some inspiration from me for something they would have done anyway.

[vunderba]

Anecdotally I've noticed that people in the tech world seem to have a rather tenuous grasp on basic ethics when it comes to the difference between being inspired by product X versus shamelessly copying it.

If you see some app/game/service and then proceed to make an alternate version without giving a shout-out or credit to the original, that's a pretty low class move.

[muzani → vunderba]

That's legally fine, but ethically not. I find in discussions here, people tend to base their decisions around what is legal or profitable.

[throwaway598]

I wrote a short reference book as an educational reference. Very niche. Released under Creative Commons.

When interviewing someone, they presented pages from it and claimed themselves as author of the 'highly technical work'.