Comment on You guys should check out the reddit clone I've been working on
FanciestPants@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Is it okay to openly say that you’ve cloned another product, or promote a product as a clone of another? I honestly don’t know the legal precedents, and know that there are many sites that have copied elements of other products that they intend to compete with, but reading the post title gave me a sinking feeling of Reddit lawyers perking up.
The site looks nice, and I really hope that I’m just being paranoid about possible legal exposure.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 9 months ago
There are three issues:
For copyright, you have to make an exact copy - which OP didn’t do.
For trademarks, there has to be confusion over who sells the product. OP isn’t trying to impersonate Reddit so they’re fine there as well.
With patents… yes, if Reddit owns any patents on their service, then OP has a problem. But I don’t think they do. Also patents have very short expiry dates (depends on the type of patent but usually 20 years, sometimes less).