| > On stealing "ideas," do you have some advice here? IANAL, and esp. I am not from the US so I don't really have a good grasp of the spirit of the law there (except that from the outside it is constantly surprising and scary!) however, here in the UK i have some experience, esp because i want to ship software which directly competes with my previous employers in the future... one thing to remember is that working somewhere enables you to gain knowledge about their workings and that the employer allows this at the time for its own benefit and not for yours. its very difficult to prove/disprove if this happened though, and the contract signed when working there might turn out to be critical. whilst non-compete clauses are frequently so poorly written that they can never be enforced, the precedent here (in the UK) is that if you want to be safe and be able to point at past cases in defense then you do not compete for two years, poach employees, nor compete on your former employer's doorstep geographically. afaik there have been zero successful claims by employers if these criteria have been met... remember this can be anything, from having beers on friday, to using a particular software for time-keeping - all the way through the the source code that you are so willing to allow to be searched. if you want better luck with this approach of being open - open every thing up, not just the code, but the working practices, software used, internal hierarchy, which cleaning company you use... everything. on the other hand i know plenty of companies started by (naive) people who left and started immediately with their buddies from an old job and directly competed with their former employer within a year, using knowledge and skills that they improved on the job. they meant no harm and felt that what they were doing was fair, but imo they took an incredible risk by not researching what has happened in the past with such cases, and are lucky to have gotten away with it. i hope this goes well for you. be ready for the media and naive readers to not read the detail of what has been written, and instead to slam you for nicking code to start up a company. |
Relevantly, Shred Video doesn't even compete directly with Smule for customers. Smule is building a network of karaoke singers and aspiring music enthusiasts to create music together. Shred Video is building technology to help athletes and adventure travelers make movies.
For example, it's unimaginable that a user would consider Smule apps and Shred Video to be competing substitutes that solve a similar need. She'd literally be choosing between "do I want to use this Smule app to sing karaoke songs or play guitar with, or do I want to use this Shred Video app to make a movie from my snowboarding footage?"