Best Practices to Protect Your App Idea From Being Stolen: Tips from Cleveroad

According to the Arxcan company report, it's a company that provides mobile applications security, 97% of all top Google Play apps and 87% of the top App Store apps were copied for the last few years. These clones bring real harm to businesses and steal potential users which leads to income and market share loss. Here are some of the examples when some popular ideas were cloned:

• Yo messenger developers were shocked when they got to know that similar application Yolo steals lots of their customers. 
• Flappy Bird, one of the brightest examples that got wide media coverage. News portal The Guardian reported that the third of all games published in Appstore in a day are the clones of Flappy Bird. The Flappy Bird phenomenon motivated thousands of developers to create similar games. And the fact that the creator of the original game deleted his app from the store, clones became even more popular. 
• Uber. The app has such a great business model (service on deliver) that it was not only copied for thousand times but also adopted and applied to many other spheres.

And all these great ideas faced really hard times trying to persuade app stores and judges that the fact of theft has really happened. Because of that, in such a situation, before accusing anyone in a court, make sure that it was really copied. 

There is a very fine line between copying and inspiration reaching. So you need to understand if an app was copied or was used as a source of inspiration. If the second variant is more obvious, then your chances to prove the fact of copyright infringement are very little.

You have to figure out in what way the app was copied. Was it a name, description, screenshots, or the code of your app? This evidence will be more significant if you have your trademark registered.

Yet, we believe that it's better to use all possible preventive methods and learn how to protect your app idea from being copied before it's been stolen. And first of all, you have to consider what you want to protect: a ready-made technical product, a concept of the product, a technology, an algorithm or a service. And understand on what stage of the development you are at the moment:

• You have only a bare idea, that's all.
• The product is under development and you already have a prototype.
• It's a finished product.

If you need to know the approximate cost of your app but you don't want to contact a development company yet, then watch our video about the cost of an app development and how we make it's estimation.

Another factor you have to control is a number of people who have access to your project. In a case, you have only an idea and are looking for partners for your project you can use gentlemen's agreement discussing the details with the potential team members. Gentlemen's agreement is also a way to protect your app idea from being copied during the first initial stages. It's an oral discussion of the information when all the parties agreed not to share the information and not to use it or use the idea by themselves.

The other option to secure an idea is an NDA agreement for software development. What does NDA stand for? Some people underestimate this document, yet it guarantees some degree of security to your data. NDA is an official document that contains all the conditions of data sharing, who and to what extent is responsible for data security, how the data can be used and other terms of the commitment.

An NDA for software development is a great option for a small team or a company. Along with this document, you also need to remember that only a limited number of people should have an access to the information. Thus it will be much easier to control information flows.

Use of an NDA for software contractors in a wise approach which may become the most efficient method to protect your intellectual property. Nevertheless, sometimes a desire to protect an idea may influence negatively on a business development. Let's take a look at some benefits of NDA and cases when it may have negative impacts.

NDA software development agreement guarantees the protection of all your rights on an idea and project during the development stage. All the intellectual properties connected with the project and it's development belongs to you. So if your competitors release a product which somehow is similar to yours because of the data leakage in the company, you have all chances to prove your rights in the court.

NDA agreement for an app development is a must if you hire an off-side developer(s). It's a necessary step that will not only ensure the confidentiality of your idea before it's being launched to the market but also will exclude the possibility of intellectual property unauthorised use after the product launching. The agreement also guarantees that in a case of contractual breach, a hired company (team or a developer) cannot continue developing the product or using the ideas that formed the basis of your product. Here's a list of advantages of an NDA signing provides you with:

• Keeps an idea of a project in secret. 
• Protects your rights on the project and it's idea in a case of information leakage. 
• Keeps the rights on a project after the release in a case with off-side developers. 
• Keeps the rights on a product in a case of termination of the contract with off-side vendors. 
• Protects a product and it's components on the development phase and after it has been published.

There are a lot of benefits which has a non disclosure agreement for an app development if compared to the other types of agreement. Yet, it can be not enough or it can have some negative impacts sometimes. Let's find out when exactly.

It was estimated that about 97% of all mobile apps don't have suitable protection, which makes them more vulnerable for piracy. To prevent such aspects, use our tips to guarantee the security for your product:

What to do if someone has already copied your app? If you found a piracy app in the store, you need to inform App Store about it. The stores can lower the rate of the clone or even remove clones. When Flappy Bird problem received wide coverage in mass media, Apple Store and Google Play lowered the positions of the clones. Each store has it's own procedure for such cases. Here are the links you can use to inform Apple App Store, Google Play and Microsoft Windows of the violations and piracy incidents.

Of course, it all sounds scary if you are developing your first app. Yet, with a right preparation, reliable partners and development team you can be sure that your app will stay yours. If you want to keep your ideas secure, drop us a line, we know how to keep secrets!

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