Plagiarism Horror Stories

Question

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&rsquo;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 · Accepted Answer

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 · Answer

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.

throwaway598 · Answer

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'.