Legal or not, it's very common. The startups that are funded by venture capitals are under huge amount of stress, because they have to show results fast. The startup CEOs, advisors and investors are always looking at other competition startup. It’s much easier to just copy ideas, rather be creative and innovative. The startups have a legal team that is making sure all the documents are always clean, when an offer comes around the table. The startups are bought and sold within the venture capitals network, hence they all follow the same template. In case of a dispute, the legal team is more than happy to fight. But then it matters what’s the value of the startup the fight is for. If the payout is larger, the legal action makes sense. If the other party has no money, and the legal fees will be higher, then it’s better to just let the dispute go. The larger corporations are always ready to have lawsuits for startups that have decent valuation or producing large revenue. If for small legal fee, a huge revenue can be gained by lawsuit against another company, that’s great news for everyone in the venture capital industry.

Back in 2011, a venture capital startup copied my auto tweets idea. They got a very tiny exit. The issue with copying ideas is that once the idea is copied, the innovation gets stuck, to what to do next? I still make fun of those venture capitalists and ask for my ‘Intellectual Property’ documents. Just recently, I build analytics, which I do for all social networks and social media startups I have worked for in the past 10 years. The competition copied the analytics and the Startup pivot idea. Even used the same name for the features to capitalize on our branding efforts. I take that as a validation of my work, and not a lawsuit. On the other hand, if a venture capitalist have a lawsuit against me, that could be great payout for me and my lawyers.