Question
Hello! We are a startup based in Germany. Our business model focuses on innovative, turnkey full-stack infrastructures for enterprises. One of our software products which we have been distributing for the last 8 months quite successfully seems now to have been copied by a competitor. The company in question is based in the US. They recently launched a product which appears to be more or less identical to ours. Is there anything we can do? How can we know if they actually copied our code?
Answers: 3 public & 1 private
The first three questions you should ask and find the answers to are 1) do you have patents or other IP to protect your software; 2) if you do, where are your patents or other IP - in other words, which country(ies); and 3) where is the alleged infringement occurring? Patents and other IP are territorial, meaning, you only have protection in a particular country if you have patents in those countries. Copyright protection may be different - you should check what options you have with an IP professional. As for knowing if they actually copied your code, you can possibly purchase their software and effectively reverse engineer it.
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