[jashmenn]

True story: I emailed friskies about this in November last year. I sent them a video of our game and asked if they wanted to work together. I had a few phone calls with them and they told us they loved the idea. Then one day: silence. They wouldn't return my calls or emails.

Now just this week they release this game, same idea, almost same domain. (I would guess the reason they didn't use the domain gameforcats.com is because I also own that domain.)

Folks say I should contact an IP lawyer, but I'm not sure I a) want to go up against big-corp (who will just claim they came up with it independently) or b) believe in that sort of thing.

Any advice?

[pbiggar]

I'd try to create a big stink about it in the press ("BIGCORP steals indie company's idea!!"), but not actually sue them or anything. This would have the benefit that people would hear about your product, which would benefit you both (though I assume you more because you'll have higher SEO and ranking in the App Store?).

[TheWaterbug]

This is the right approach. See if someone like Mossberg at the WSJ would pick this up. The traffic increase would be huge.

[JoshTriplett]

If you actually have email responses from them, you might have a sufficient paper trail to make it worth trying. That said, assuming you only provided an idea and discussion, you probably don't have any particularly strong IP claim over their independently developed game even if you can show that they got the idea from you. So, it really depends on what result you want here. You probably won't manage to get any money out of them, but you might manage to get them to add a credit pointing at you.

[herval]

So this makes them the zuckerbergs of ipad cat games?