What to do if someone completely rips-off your product?

Question

A recent launch of orbic ai today here on product hunt has bring notice to me that the product they have launched is a complete ripoff of my product (ainave).

With all the AI tools data and UX, they are kind-off rebranding on our efforts of developing a good and useful AI platform without any consent or credits and this does not feels right.

I admire if someone tries to get inspired from my product but this is just a pure copy/paste. I have reported the launch post and linkedin post but still, I don't think it's going to make any impact as we are a small team and don't have much social media power to counter this.

All of this is happening before our upcoming launch is near soon and this is really heart breaking.
Any feedback or help would be greatly appriciated!

André J · Accepted Answer

@ramitkoul Your probably right. But anyone is in their full right to scrape and copy. This is probably a good thing, because now your mindset should be, what can we build that can't be copied. How should we change our playbook. Products with weak moats won't survive anyways. Not saying your product has a weak moat. You have to start somewhere, but in general. This is all about strategy and product positioning. Any investor would ask you the same question. How will your product survive? Why can't anyone just copy it in less than a day. If your answer is I don't know, then you won't get an investment. So this question is really more deep and fundamental. Differentiator / Moat is key. And as I mentioned before, one of these AI directories will take a big chunk of the market. it's nascent right now. My prediction is that the one with a great name and a great brand will take it. The product hunt of the AI age.

André J · Answer

@ramitkoul Sure thing. This is what product hunt is about. talking about making products. After some thought I think this case is about these click farms. There is a new gold rush in AI apps going on and because of that a lot of cottage industry will popup. AI directories is a way to promote AI apps, and there are already click-farms and SEO-farms that will promote apps for a price. And with AI, these can be synthesised at scale. So I don't think there will be one copy cat of your data. It will be 100s 1000s 😅. One way to differentiate and be an authentic AI Directory is to enable users to review products. Hard / impossible to fake people loging in with LinkedIn etc. That would be one way to create a moat that can't be copied.

André J · Answer

Why do you think they ripped you off? What specifically did they rip of? It does not look the same to me. Only similarity is that it's an AI directory website. which there are 1000s of out there. And there is no copyrights regarding tech idea, design, or functionality. You can add copyrights to a brand. But that's about it. You can try to add patents as well, but that mostly apply to hardware. It's very difficult to add patents to software. The only way to create a moat that people can't rip off is to make advance technology that is hard to make in the first place.

Ramit Koul · Answer

@sentry_co Thanks a lot man, it really helps!

Ramit Koul · Answer

@sentry_co I have listed some things in this doc: t[dot]co/sAXMsICtsi

Have a look at this. I know that it is also one of the AI directoy website and there are 1000s already but try to understand my point here. The tools data and all is 100% scraped and copied from our website which is explained in the doc itself. I might not be suprised if they get plagarism action from search engines as well. Not only that, even the smallest details are litterally copy/pasted. I really would have loved if they had acknowledged and got inspired from us but it is not the case.

What do you call a product which has the exact same data (plagiarized) and almost same UX? A rip-off? Hope you get some understanding after reading the doc.

Ramit Koul · Answer

@sentry_co Thanks for your words! I completely agree with you that the copy cats will die eventually and we also are not just trying to be an AI tools directory. Infact, our next launch is somewhat which we believe is truly promising and not only that, we will find that moat someday. But, since we are small right now, maybe that's why it's hard to see people on product hunt supporting a rip off more than the original itself. Anyways, Thanks for the advice!

Ramit Koul · Answer

@sentry_co Checkout more one thing I just noticed. They modified the auto-gpt and bing image creator page url and content as it was mentioned in the doc earlier with the screenshot. See, these guys are quite literally the fraudsters who now have feared of any action we might take. Believe me, I have never used these kind of strong words before but this is something where I cannot resist.

Ramit Koul · Answer

@sentry_co This is the kind of direction we are going for our next upcoming launch. Community feedback is invaluable, so we're excited to hear your thoughts as we move forward. Thanks for your suggestion and this much attention to details 🙌🏻

Ramit Koul · Answer

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @marienelle_cano!

Marienelle Cano · Answer

Well it depends, because if someone just copied the concept I think it's not that bad, but if our brand name was copied and obviously imitated, then I would like to make an appeal hahahah But for me our brand can't be ripped off by a cheap developer haha

André J · Answer

@ramitkoul Don't worry about copy cats, its apart of the game. But do point it out of course. Momentum is the ultimate moat, just focus on your self and you will. It's impossible to compete with people on a mission fueled by momentum and traction. 🚀

What to do if someone completely rips-off your product?

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