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Another Control Lesson (China clones high profile app game, apple removes original)

luniac

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The game is Clicker Heroes! I don't play it but i know its a popular game

TITLE
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Apple removed my game from the app store because some company in China made a clone, trademarked the name we were already using, and then asked Apple to take down my game.


Apple removed my game from the app store because some company in China made a clone, trademarked the name we were already using, and then asked Apple to take down my game. : gamedev
 
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S.Y.

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I read a book a while ago about AI.

At one point, the author discussed the different entrepreneurial philosophy between China and the west. Something pretty interesting.

What he said boils down to the fact Chinese entrepreneurs shamelessly copy and expect their "companies" to be copied by others. And since they do, to stay on top they have to:
(1) be ruthless when it comes to competing
(2) constantly execute and find ways to stay ahead.

Point (2) is pretty interesting. I will come back to that.

Where as in the West, the philosophy is "I created this. Let's trademark / get a patent and protect it". Which can lead to complacency.

Back to (2). In a way that creates a form of innovation. Entrepreneurs have to constantly do things to stay ahead of others that copy them.

I found it really interesting.

Many see the fact that China copy things from the west. But they don't see the ruthless competition and how it can spur innovation.

Now. If we agree that AI and Data are the playground of the future. And if we take the Chinese philosophy and the sheer number of people... It is kind of scary.

Wonder what @MJ DeMarco, @eliquid, @Andy Black, @lowtek and others think about this.
 
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LifeTransformer

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IP doesn't translate to Chinese.

I actually think a lot of Patents and Trademarks are complete horseshit TBH.
 

luniac

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China creating a clone is one thing.
Having apple remove your original app is a whole other thing!
that's your livelihood! its fuked up to the max!
And its all Apple's fault for allowing it. "American" company my a$$.
China is just being china.
 
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S.Y.

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China creating a clone is one thing.
Having apple remove your original app is a whole other thing!
that's your livelihood! its fuked up to the max!
And its all Apple's fault for allowing it. "American" company my a$$.
China is just being china.

Please don't get me wrong. Not saying what they did was ok.

Just dealing with reality.

Which for me is that they can copy what people do without shame, outexecute, rip the benefits and get ahead.

We can sit there and debate whether it is good or bad. Though I don't know what we can do.

And the scary part for me is the AI aspect. When Deepmind won at alpha go, China was nowhere near the US on AI and Big Data.

In less than 5 years, they caught up to the point where Huawei is being banned.

Less than 5 years. Let that sinks in.

Look at their tech giants: Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.
 
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luniac

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Please don't get me wrong. Not saying what they did was ok.

Just dealing with reality.

Which for me is that they can copy what people do without shame, outexecute, rip the benefits and get ahead.

We can sit there and debate whether it is good or bad. Though I don't know what we can do.

And the scary part for me is the AI aspect. When Deepmind won at alpha go, China was nowhere near the US on AI and Big Data.

In less than 5 years, they caught up to the point where Huawei is being banned.

Less than 5 years. Let that sinks in.

Look at their tech giants: Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu.

i did say China is just being China lol
 
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eliquid

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hmm...

I have enough people already copying from me left and right, right here in the USA. I even learn about it from others, before they do it.

If someone from China were to do it, it would be just another stick in the fire.

.
 

StrikingViper69

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Where as in the West, the philosophy is "I created this. Let's trademark / get a patent and protect it". Which can lead to complacency.


Wonder what @MJ DeMarco, @eliquid, @Andy Black, @lowtek and others think about this.

I'm not sure it works like that.

If you invent something, patent it, and it is profitable, one of two situations can play out:
1. Your product is genius, and you deserve the profits you reap
2. Someone else makes something that's even better, capturing your market

You're either so far ahead of the game, it's incredibly difficult to innovate, or, you have to keep innovating and out-thinking others.

A system where anyone can take what you do, copy it and cut into your market (like with China) will destroy innovation. The incentive to create is replaced with "what's the point when someone rips off my idea".

What do Chinese entrepreneurs do, when people stop making things they can copy? How do they "innovate" then...?
 

Walter Hay

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Prior use can be grounds for objecting to a trademark application in Western countries, but not in the Wild East.

If the developer of the game had trademarked it, I seriously doubt that Apple would have taken it down, except maybe in China.

Walter
 
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Longinus

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Prior use can be grounds for objecting to a trademark application in Western countries, but not in the Wild East.

If the developer of the game had trademarked it, I seriously doubt that Apple would have taken it down, expect maybe in China.

Walter

This.

Always interesting when bold claims are made and important details are left out.

Game made $200-300 a day and still nothing trademarked, go figure.
 

RazorCut

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Trademarking is relatively cheap, easy to do and provides a good deal of protection, at least in the Western world. You are foolish if you don't protect yourself.

Mind you sometimes even that doesn't help when you are dealing with big corps. We had copycats attach themselves to our trademarked custom goods on Amazon and couldn't get them removed or it took so long the listing was trashed by the time we got it back due to poor quality copies producing a string of bad feedback.

Telling Amazon that we do not supply any third party, either wholesaler or retailer with our products so any company offering our products were obviously selling counterfeits fell on deaf ears. This was some time ago so hopefully their service has improved.
 
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Xeon

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I've had dreams of doing business in China. Imagine: 1+ billion population. The only thing stopping me is the copyright issue....
 

S.Y.

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A system where anyone can take what you do, copy it and cut into your market (like with China) will destroy innovation. The incentive to create is replaced with "what's the point when someone rips off my idea".

What do Chinese entrepreneurs do, when people stop making things they can copy? How do they "innovate" then...?

Not necessarily.

Let's say you have a system where:
1. Everybody can copy what works
2. By copying, anybody can build wealth
3. Ruthless competition is rewarded
4. To keep your wealth, you must out-think and out-innovate everybody

That counterintuitively can lead to innovation.

I also think that Chinese companies are at the point where they are truly innovating as well. Look at companies like Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. I also think that their entrepreneurial ecosystem is set up to push for "innovation as a necessity to survive".

In the future, we might have a copying loop of innovation where Chinese company A innovates. And then other companies just keep copying and innovating

How can it?

Let's taking statistime. And say you know anyone can copy what you do and reap your benefit. You know they can potentially execute as well as you. You want to stay at the top of your game and want the company to be ultra successful. That push you to constantly out-think everybody coming after you. Which push you to innovate in a way.


PS: I am not making a judgment here. I am making observations, and see things in a different way.
 

Patrick Jones

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Let's taking statistime. And say you know anyone can copy what you do and reap your benefit. You know they can potentially execute as well as you. You want to stay at the top of your game and want the company to be ultra successful. That push you to constantly out-think everybody coming after you. Which push you to innovate in a way.

I see your point.

For me innovation is driven by user demand. I listen to what the users want and implement it.
If I was concerned about somebody copying me, I could spend extra time on listening to my users.
But it wouldn't create new ways of innovating. Just the same way but under higher pressure.

Thus I don't think that those copying shamelessly really benefit innovation.
 
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Jsoh

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the developer of the game had trademarked it, I seriously doubt that Apple would have taken it down, except maybe in China

Yeah I agree. Sounds like a case of not locking yourself down. Why the hell wouldn't you trademark if you have solid $$ coming in. Makes no sense. Well, they learned a lesson at least.
 

George Appiah

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I see your point.

For me innovation is driven by user demand. I listen to what the users want and implement it.
If I was concerned about somebody copying me, I could spend extra time on listening to my users.
But it wouldn't create new ways of innovating. Just the same way but under higher pressure.

Thus I don't think that those copying shamelessly really benefit innovation.

(Emphasis mine)

You wouldn't think so.... because you're looking at this as a STAR topology where everyone is copying from one grandmaster. In that case, yes, there would be no innovation.

But it's more like a MESH where one company would copy something, innovates on top of what they've copied to have a competitive edge, only for 10 other companies to copy this new innovation, each adding their own secret sauces on top of what they copied, others ripping them off, and on and on and on.

Take Huawei for example. Ren Zhengfei started out distributing PBXes imported from (then British) Hong Kong in the late '80s. Then the company started reverse engineering (aka copying) them. Fast forward to today, Huawei is now the biggest technical contributor to the upcoming ITU IMT-2020 (5G) cellular network standard, and the company holds hundreds of key "standard-essential patents" (ie non-optional, patents REQUIRED to use the standard) for this new technology. Not bad for a copycat, is it?

upload_2019-5-26_4-23-15.png
 
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Patrick Jones

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But it's more like a MESH where one company would copy something, innovates on top of what they've copied to have a competitive edge, only for 10 other companies to copy this new innovation, each adding their own secret sauces on top of what they copied, others ripping them off, and on and on and on.

Take Huawei for example. [...]

From what we've seen so far, 99.9% of Chinese companies do not innovate on top of what they copied. Their research is limited to finding out whom to copy next.

Huawei is where they are today, because they have an annual research budget of $15bn.
 
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George Appiah

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Huawei is where they are today, because they have an annual research budget of $15bn.

But how did they go from reselling imported PBX to have this $15bn annual research budget you talk about? They certainly weren't endowed with $15bn annual budget while reselling PBX in 1987!

(NB: I worked with Huawei briefly in Ghana as an RF Planning & Optimization Engineer -- designing, building and optimizing radio networks for the GSM operators here --- and I got a bit of indoctrination into the Huawei Way, so I may be biased here.)
 
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eliquid

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But how did they go from reselling imported PBX to have this $15bn annual research budget you talk about? They certainly weren't endowed with $15bn annual budget while reselling PBX in 1987!

(NB: I worked with Huawei briefly in Ghana as an RF Planning & Optimization Engineer -- designing, building and optimizing radio networks for the GSM operators here --- and I got a bit of indoctrination into the Huawei Way, so I may be biased here.)

Huawei just might be the 1% that is different from the rest that can actually innovate.

But look at Amazon and all the chinese copy cats there. All the damage that creates ( same with app store ).

Look at the gas stations and small stores in the USA riddled with chinese copy cat products hanging on the walls and shelves ( iphone cords, memory sticks, ear buds, etc )

Look at all the fake luxury goods that get imported in ( shoes, purses, shirts, etc ).

I am not against chinese products, I just see what is being said.

.
 

Quarky

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How could someone clone your game if your game has met the commandment of entry barrier? Do you ever see EA Sports or SEGA getting cloned in China? They don't get cloned because they own techs, which can't be cloned.
 
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