During the history of my life, a lot of my ideas/names of things have been stolen.
And that’s fine. I’m not someone who has a lot of capital laying around. So I can’t invest in these ideas, anyway. So if it weren’t for others stealing the ideas… they would never be a thing.
How many ideas? How many names? Well here is a short list, of like five things stolen/borrowed/used with the same name from between, say, 2000 and 2010, I can come up with on the fly…
— I’ve been using “NickelBlock” since 2003, when I was a student DJ on KBVR. In 2012, there was an app by the same name.
— In 2006, I started developing an online streaming concept to live-stream college athletics (more than just football, basketball and baseball) by the colleges themselves, not an outside media company. At the time, most colleges were still using media outlets (Fox Sports, ABC, ESPN, etc) to host and stream the games online. Now, most colleges host and stream their own content using a similar concept to the one I drafted.
— In 2007, I started “The Five” sports website and podcast. In 2011, “The Five” talk show started on Fox News.
— In 2008, I visualized the concept for a tablet. I noted to a few good friends, Erik Steen and Brian Kuo, that, “eventually cell phones and laptops would merge. And we would end up with an over-sized cell phone that would double as a computer. Most everyone would have one and a bluetooth-like headset would be used, so the phone would be left in a pocket or backpack at all times.” By 2010, we had the iPad.
— In 2010, I started “Five Questions” on that “The Five” website, mentioned above.. By 2011, I was creating videos with colleagues:
Sometime in 2014, Yahoo! Sports started using the same rubric for sports coverage.
So what prompted me to put this all down in a post today?
I stumbled across this today:
It is from 2015 and popped up in google while I was searching for an article on my website from a few years ago.
It got me thinking, just how many times others have borrowed my ideas or used my naming devices without my approval.
Turns out, at least a handful of times. Bummer.
