Hey, guys. I wanted to see what people's thoughts were on the best ways to protect a new app from being copied. I notice a lot of duplicate apps out there and obviously have read about things like scrabulous on facebook and tris on the iphone. Are most people trying to get copyrights or patents for their apps before releasing or is the best protection building a great app with a big following?
From what I know about software copyright, you essentially have a copyright as the author of the source. I could be completely wrong in that statement but I think that's the case. You can find more here: Software copyright - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you're worried about others trying to rip off your idea, the only real protection you can get is a trademark on the name and a patent on the idea/process.
I personally don't put a lot in these sorts of things. Probably because I haven't created anything that people would want to copy, I don't know. I've always felt that if people want to rip it off, they will. They'll change the name, put a new UI on it, alter the process enough, or whatever it takes. Unless you have a lot of time to fight in court, I wouldn't stress out too much regarding the legal protections. That's just my opinion.
Hey, guys. I wanted to see what people's thoughts were on the best ways to protect a new app from being copied. I notice a lot of duplicate apps out there and obviously have read about things like scrabulous on facebook and tris on the iphone. Are most people trying to get copyrights or patents for their apps before releasing or is the best protection building a great app with a big following?
Communist! (Ok kidding)
But on a serious note you should allow competition to your application, why do you deserve peoples money when someone else can do what you can and better and for a cheaper price ?
Think from a consumer's point of view and you will see how unfair it would be to stop competition.
But on a serious note you should allow competition to your application, why do you deserve peoples money when someone else can do what you can and better and for a cheaper price ?
Think from a consumer's point of view and you will see how unfair it would be to stop competition.
I don't think he's discussing competition, but rather copying or infringement. There's a big difference between competing (Mac OS X vs Windows) and infringing on established copyrights (iPhone vs all of those iPhone clones). Any business worth anything will seek trademarks, copyrights, and/or patents to protect their intellectual property.
Not sure if there is any way within your app to prevent it from being copied, but I'd suggest just keep searching the web every now and then and when you see someone hosting a pirated copy of your app, send them a threatening email. I've already found tons of site hosting pirated copies of my software, I've sent them all cease and desist letters, don't know what more I can do.
Last edited by elektrobank; 11-01-2008 at 02:09 PM.
Well you would be hard pressed to win a battle of "they copied my app" so my thoughts on it are to make it better than theirs and you wont have a problem. If you release a new idea to the store there are going to be copycats so you just have to make yours the best out there. Simple.
How to protect copying of an app
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