All too often, when it comes to copying one another, companies seem to feel that they have to sue. In fact, there are times when we see copyright and patent holders bizarrely claim that not suing is not an option. So here's a bit of a surprise. A. Yeh points us to a story of a Korean company, Netmarble, who produced a game called Everybody Cha Cha Cha, which some claimed was a pretty close copy of a Sony min-game called Everybody's Stress Buster. To be clear, the two games do seem pretty similar... but also seem to use pretty standard driving game mechanics found in tons of games throughout the history of video games. You can see the two in this video. Stress Buster is on top, Cha Cha Cha on the bottom. Sony did initially cry foul at this copying, leading NetMarble to (amusingly) claim that Sony was trying to piggyback on its success. Of course, after that NetMarble then started adding a bunch of other features to its game to further distinguish it from the Sony game. Oh look, competition spurring innovation.

Either way, in the end, Sony decided not to pursue any sort of legal response. While it still uses some slightly menacing language about how this doesn't mean they've settled, Sony admits that any "prolonged controversy" over this wouldn't be beneficial for the mobile game development community.

According to ET News and This Is Game, Sony told the Korean media that it did not want to "hamper" the mobile gaming industry in Korea.

A Sony spokesperson is quoted by This Is Game as saying, "We were concerned that any prolonged controversy such as this is not beneficial for both the local and the international mobile game development community. Internally, we decided not to pursue any legal action as long as no additional problems arise. Some may think it's because we've settled with Netmarble already, but we are simply choosing not to pursue legal action in a broader view/sense. This does not mean we have settled with Netmarble."

That's a fairly enlightened view, actually. It's one that we've suggested in the past, though. Even as it may be frustrating and annoying to have someone copy you, going legal in response often is not the best strategic response. We've urged companies to recognize that fact, and kudos to Sony for holding back on releasing the legal hounds upon realizing the cost-benefit analysis meant it wouldn't be helpful (and would possibly be harmful to the wider community).

With the Apple/Samsung case finishing up, James Allworth, over at HBR, has an excellent post wondering why it matters if one company copies from another? A few years ago, we wrote about a book that pointed out that copying and then innovating on the copies is a perfectly reasonable and important business strategy. Allworth points to a new book (one I've been looking forward to for a while) by Chris Sprigman and Kal Raustiala (who we've quoted numerous times) called The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation.

He then takes the lessons of that book and applies it to the Apple/Samsung fight, noting that even if we assume they were imitating each other, that seems to have only encouraged further innovation, not less:

If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case.

But it's what happened next that's really fascinating.

Apple didn't stop innovating at all. Instead: they came out with the iMac. Then OS X ("Redmond, start your photocopiers"). Then the iPod. Then the iPhone. And now, most recently, the iPad. Given the underlying reason that Apple has been bringing these cases to court was to enable them to continue to innovate, it's hard not to ask: if copying stops innovation, why didn't Apple stop innovating last time they were copied? Being copied didn't stop or slow their ability to innovate at all. If anything, it only seemed to accelerate it. Apple wasn't able to rest on its laurels; to return to profitability, and to take the mantle they hold today of one of the technology industry's largest companies, they had to innovate as fast as they could.

It's the same story we've been explaining for years. History and tons of studies have shown over and over and over again that competition drives innovation, because innovation is an ongoing process. Thus, when others can copy you, that actually accelerates innovation by giving the original incentives to stay ahead in the marketplace, and develop the next great thing. Research has also shown that it's not as easy as you think to "just copy" because you only see the superficial aspects to copy, rather than having the deeper understanding of what works and what doesn't that a market leader often gains.

In fact, when you understand that, you realize that patents can actually slow down innovation by letting a company rest on its laurels, and not have to continue to rapidly innovate. Other companies can't build on what they did first, and so they don't have the same incentives to continue to advance the market forward. And the Apple/Samsung fight in the market appears to support that.

If Apple ends up winning this case against Samsung — and either stops Samsung from releasing their phones and tablets to the market, or charges them a hefty license fee to do so — does anyone really believe that the market will suddenly become more innovative, or that devices will suddenly become more affordable? Similarly, if Samsung wins, do you really believe that Apple will suddenly slow its aggressive development of the iPhone and iPad? It's certainly not what happened last time they lost one of these cases.

Now, if you're with me so far, then I don't think it's a leap to suggest that having these companies duke it out in court over "who might have copied who" is counterproductive. All these lawsuits flying around suggest that everyone is already copying each other, anyway. A better solution? Let's have these companies solely focused on duking it out in the marketplace — where consumers, not courtrooms, make the decisions about innovation. In such a world, the best defense against copying isn't lawsuits, but rather, to innovate at such a rate that your competition can't copy you fast enough. That, to me, sounds like an ideal situation not just for consumers — but for the real innovators, too.

Exactly.

We've written a few times about the wonders of Turntable.fm, one of the first new music services that really seems to get the fact that part of what makes music so enjoyable is the social experience. It's a wonderful service. However, as with anything that gets a lot of users and attention, it isn't long before copycats come along. And, as Eliot van Buskirk has reported, Turntable.fm has a copycat in the form of Rolling.fm, a service that almost certainly chose to copy an awful lot from Turntable.fm. Of course, as with many "copycats," it appears that Rolling.fm has tried to add some features that sound useful, "such as the ability to see who is in a room in one big list, and a private chat feature that lets you speak directly to Facebook friends even if they’re in a different room." But I tend to agree with Eliot in noting that this is not a bad thing:

Who cares? The world needs all the neat ways to listen to music it can get, from where we’re standing. It’s a case of “the more the merrier” — even if Rolling.fm is quite possibly the least original web app we’ve ever seen.

It’s also a case of “different strokes for different folks.”

The Rolling.fm group-listening web app differs from Turntable.fm in that many of the most popular rooms correlate to specific colleges and universities (although anyone can join those rooms). And so far, we’re hearing far clubbier and less indie music than we generally hear on Turntable.fm.

Who knows — we could be just about to witness an explosion of group listening services, each with its own twist on the Turntable.fm concept that will appeal to a different demographic. While Turntable.fm deserves ample credit for coming up with the concept, it can’t really be bad for music fans if that concept continues to be replicated as it has been here…

I'd go even further than that. Copycats like this actually help everyone, including Turntable.fm. Not only does it help spread the concept even further, but Turntable.fm can just as equally learn from the "improvements" a copycat makes. On top of that, this will help keep Turntable.fm on its toes. As much as I love the service, and as much as I understand that it's very much in beta and at times struggles with the amount of usage it gets, the service has been really buggy at times and having some direct competition in the rear view mirror can only act as an incentive to improve as quickly as possible.

Last year, we wrote about Oded Shenkar's excellent book Copycats, which argues, persuasively, that our cultural distaste towards companies that copy one another is misplaced and not very sensible. There are tremendous benefits to be had when two or more companies copy each other, mainly in that it continues to push all players to innovate and to provide better overall offerings. While I haven't been able to test out Rolling.fm yet (it was down when I went to check it out), I think this development is really good news for Turntable.fm and hope that the company is willing to recognize that as well.

With all the attention paid last week to the news of completely fake Apple stores popping up in China, you figured Chinese officials had to do something. Apparently, they started investigating, and shut down some of the fake Apple stores that were found in Kunming city. Perhaps most interesting, however, is that they let some of the stores stay open -- including the very story discovered by the BirdAbroad blog, which kicked off all of this attention. Apparently, officials found that that particular store "has a licence to trade and is selling genuine Apple products."

For all the talk of companies "copying" each other, it's always interesting to see how things work in practice. Last year, we wrote about the excellent book Copycats, which discusses both successes and failures in companies that simply try to copy others. In general, what it finds is that merely copying someone else isn't enough to be successful. You have to innovate, and do something better to be a success. But, one of the "easy" targets, if you want to just copy and still find a market, is to copy in a different territory. For example, it's well known that for every successful US internet startup, a near direct clone pops up in China pretty quickly. The same thing happens in Europe at times as well. But sometimes things get odd.

There's been a ton of buzz lately around the startup Airbnb, which a lot of investors apparently weren't impressed with early on, but which has been able to build up pretty massive adoption pretty quickly, leading to stories of it apparently being about to raise $100 million on a staggering $1 billion valuation. That seems a bit rich, but in the world of Winner Take All economics, you can see how it could make sense for some early investors.

What seems like a bit more of a head-scratcher is when a brand new clone in the space then raises $90 million just a few months after launching... and hires 400 people. This company, Wimdu, seems to be focusing on Europe. If it can pull that off, that's something, but this sets off basic alarm bells. It sounds like a company and investors just throwing money after a problem, rather than actually innovating. Historically, just throwing money after a market tends not to work nearly as well as people expect. Airbnb is apparently worried about this particular clone, but I think it may be overreacting. Money isn't everything, and a company that focuses on providing a better overall experience, rather than worrying about clones, seems like it'll be better positioned to succeed long term.

We've talked about cargo cults in the past around here, and Boing Boing points us to a great video of a talk by Jeff Veen, which argues that copycat innovators are a form of a cargo cult: The point he's making is one that we've tried to make here many times in the past -- though his analogy is much better than most we've used. Basically, it's easy to just copy what you think is cool about a product, but that's rarely (if ever) enough to actually get people to buy. This is an issue we see all the time when people get upset about our position on patents. They say that, without patents, someone would just come in and "steal" the idea, and then where would you be? But, the fact is, just being able to "copy" the product isn't enough to get it sold.

If you're truly innovative, then you not only understand your product better than some random copycat, but you also understand what makes your market want your product.

That can't be copied. Not easily. Yes, the copycat may win over some customers, but it's not the same. And, by knowing the product and the market better than anyone else, you should also be able to stay ahead of the curve and keep innovating. The copycat just has to catch up -- they're running towards where they think you were, when you may already be well past that.

But the comparison to a cargo cult is quite accurate. The cargo cultists built up their faux airports, thinking that it would bring in the same wonders as the real wartime airports did. Companies make copycat iPhones because they think that people will suddenly rush to buy them like they bought the iPhone. But it doesn't work that way.