Bang on target!!
An idea that's not taken in the context of "great execution" cannot be good or bad in absolute terms, since that can only be seen after it is implemented. This is how it works -- people only have hunches that this idea, implemented for this particular demographic, combined with this other idea, delivered just in time for this upcoming conference, might just work; but you can't really say for sure, and truth is, it's like a lottery ticket.
Expanding on that -- the idea of buying a lottery ticket is great when you win, it's bad when you lose or don't follow through with the plan (which happens in more than 99.99% of the cases). Based on that, the idea by itself is worthless, as it depends on actually buying the ticket (implementation) + timing (which affects your winnings) + lots and lots of luck. Thus buying a lottery ticket is bad for most people (as they lose time and money), but great for a few lucky individuals -- and that's how it is with startups in general.
3 days after launch, we received a cease and desist letter from SecretementVotre (secretly yours, in french) asking us to basically close the service : http://www.businessinsider.com/secretpoke-secretementvotre-2...
We had more fun than fear, and actually blogged about it. Even playing off with the title: SecretementVotre wants to screw up SecretPoke.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything. At any given time, 10+ people around the globe are thinking about the same revolutionizing ideas... The only difference between France and the US is that you cannot "protect" an idea in France... so nothing happened.
What do you mean by this?
Patents are available in nearly every country and equally for anyone in most jurisdictions; they protect [against others implementations of] your ideas.
Did I miscomprehend you?
In France, you cannot protect a business concept / process / idea. You can patent code, protect IP, logos, ... but not a concept. I'm no lawyer, of course, and any lawyer would find counter arguments. But all in all, you cannot.
For instance, this [http://mashable.com/2010/06/17/amazon-patents-social-network...] or maybe that [http://www.zdnet.com/news/facebook-wins-patent-for-location-...] would not be accepted. You would have to IP the code itself, the methods, the technology. And if someone did the same thing differently, you would not be able to attack or C&D them.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/11/jdate-slaps-zoosk-okcupid-a...
The problem is, it's challenging to know just how rich or insane this person is, and they just publicly started bumping chests with him like a drunken teenager. Other than feeling smug, why is it a smart move to make this personal/emotional? Respectfully indicate that you disagree and request that further communication come from a lawyer.
Also, by saying "We don't have a company, we're just a bunch of guys", you've said, "We don't have a corporate veil-- you can sue us DIRECTLY as individuals." Way to expose the jugular.
In this case, where there is virtually zero chance of legal proceedings actually resulting, and the protagonist is simply venting / bullying / baiting the recipient, I think publishing an email publicly is a decisive statement that you think they're silly, ridiculous, and should go away (it's also a good read and nice publicity). From a legal perspective, you don't really lose much, if any, ground.
Also, for what it's worth, even if this guy is considering the "corporate veil" (that's a big if), and even if he has a shred of a cause of action (even bigger if) then knowing he's going after individuals is even less appealing that going after a nascent company (much harder to extract money and legal fees from a 22 year old student).
Dunno about NZ's legal system-- you're probably right. In the US, a rich person with an axe to grind could make your life hell. They might gleefully spend $20k to teach some snotty kids a lesson, even if they knew they would lose. Meanwhile, the kids are maxing out credit cards to cover the cost of their out-of-his-league lawyer and are horribly distracted from actually building stuff.
Even the spectre of a lawsuit could scuttle fundraising hope. Investors don't want to touch people with enemies. If you had early acquisition interest, what happens in the reps and warranties phase when you disclose that there MIGHT be a lawsuit on the horizon? Could it scare a suitor off?
All this for 5-10k pageviews on your blog, tops?
Just file it in the loony bin and move on.
And German cities probably aren't the best place to launch such a venture. I'm not sure about Bonn and Stuttgart, but the rest definitely have good public transit. Your potential audience is seriously limited compared to, say, a city like LA.
Also, people obviously do use taxis even in Germany, and myTaxi replaces the middleman (taxi dispatchers) and replaces them with tech, so they can take a smaller cut, and claim to be impartial. Taxi drivers seem particularly disgruntled with dispatchers in Hamburg and Berlin and are happy about myTaxi giving them back some control – and more of the profit.
Hopefully the childish behavior on both sides doesn't reflect poorly on Kiwis as a whole -_-
I've heard that under certain circumstances, you can write a threatening letters, just to rattle the competition. Best get a lawyer to do it, as it sounds slightly credible, and they can make sure you don't actually do anything illegal, but you can often just quote legislation and "request" people back off ... it's just a request, right? The FBI did this to wikipedia, whose legal team sent a hilarious reply.
It's an extremely bad idea if you have a patent they are infringing on (as direct threats will force them to counter-sue, or settle immediately, or face extra damages), but for most things you can talk as much legal smack-down as you want.
It's sad that folks like this seem to think that threatening to sue at the drop of a hat is a perfectly acceptable business tactic. It's especially sad in a case like this when the intellectual 'property' (it's so ephemeral in this situation that quotes are needed) concerned involves an idea that almost everyone who has thought about location-based services has had. (No offence to Andrew and the team, they seem to have actually executed it and executed it well).
The appropriate response when dealing with folks that both don't have a lawyer and don't seem to have a case is to tell them to serve you and forget about it. They'll be forced to seek counsel, who will most likely explain to them the error of their ways. It's the kind of thing that doesn't work well when coming from you, for obvious social reasons.
An idea is worth nothing in the sense that an idea can't make money by itself. There are still such things as better and worse ideas, and "your idea is worthless, so it's not stealing for me to use your idea" (a la http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2235218) feels like a pretty slimy use of the phrase.
"You aren't the only one who can have good ideas, and you don't own an idea just because you had it first" seems like a much less judgmental way to say this.
Making this public makes Taxi Surfer look worse than the guy threatening to sue them.
