Comment by CharlieDigital
1 year ago
> If you have a great idea, and no capital and I copy you and have more capital (money, social), I can deploy my capital to crush you in the market
This is precisely how our markets work and why we have a system of trademarks, patents, and copyright.
Use those tools to your advantage if you are small.
So many people on sites like this hate patents and trademarks, but I have seen patents used in two ways:
* In slapfights between huge companies that don't really matter.
* To protect startups from copying.
These things literally exist to protect startups.
I have never seen anybody succeed on that second usage, and I've seen a few people try.
Patents protect the party with the most money to spend.
You have almost certainly seen that mechanism in action, even though you don't realize it. The most visible way that it works is through the sale of those patents to patent trolls (usually after the company has nothing left) and the resulting big-money lawsuits against big corporations that ripped them off.