I run a knowledge base software company (Helpjuice). For years, our main competitor has been copying our features with remarkable precision. At first, we thought it was normal competition, but it's gotten... interesting.<p>The pattern:
- They sign up to our platform / or see ongoing developemtn
- Study our feature changes
- Launch identical copies 2-6 months later
- Even inherit our exact bugs
- Copy our marketing copy word-for-word<p>Some examples:
- They copy our feature names exactly
- Used our headline as their email subject
- When we have a bug, they get it too (6 months later)
- Their UI/UX is identical (but purple)<p>The fascinating part? They've done this to multiple companies in our space. Other CEOs (KnowledgeOwl, Slite, Bloomfire) have similar stories except with malicious marketing practices from them.
Even better: They write comparison pages with false information about competitors, get caught, apologize, then "accidentally restore" the same false claims months later.<p>When we launched our latest feature (Wizardshot - got 6,000 users in 2 months), their team immediately signed up. Our engineers are running a betting pool on when - not if - they'll copy it.<p>Questions:
- How would you handle this?
- Has anyone experienced something similar?
- At what point does copying cross the line?<p>Context: Been in business 13 years, bootstrapped, profitable. This isn't hurting us - it's almost entertaining at this point. Just curious how others would approach this.