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As “reverse engineering," which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to trace and replicate the functions, principles, data flows, and design elements of existing services, becomes more prevalent, there are concerns that startup ideas and services have been left in a blind spot for protection. A recent case in which a fintech startup raised suspicions of service theft against a client is cited as an example of this trend.
According to industry sources on Tuesday, Team Easy, the startup that developed “FinCat,” a collaboration tool for used car warranty insurance, recently filed a report with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) accusing Company A, a former client and outsourced service provider for used car warranty insurance, of unfair competition. The company claims that Company A, which was a service customer, launched an identical service, from screen composition to example notations and terms of service wording.
Client Suddenly Launches Similar Service
Team Easy’s FinCat is infrastructure that standardizes and digitizes the work environments of insurance companies, loss adjusters, and repair shops when used car warranty insurance claims are filed, enabling consumers to receive compensation quickly. Last year, Team Easy was selected for the “Outsourced Test” under the Financial Services Commission’s financial regulatory sandbox and was conducting a Proof of Concept (PoC) with one commercial insurance company. Company A had also signed a contract with Team Easy and used FinCat.
However, in August last month, Company A launched a service similar to FinCat. Team Easy claims that this service plagiarized FinCat. This is because not only the functions of the FinCat service but also the design layout, and even the wording of items, unit prices, and authors on sample screens were identical. The wording in the user guide, terms of use, and personal information processing policy was also the same. Notably, the effective date listed in Company A’s terms of use was not the launch date of its service, but the same date as the effective date of FinCat’s terms of use.
Guok Seong-gwon, CEO of Team Easy, pointed out, “It is difficult to consider it a coincidence that even the errors present in the service launched by Company A are identical to those in FinCat.” According to the report submitted by Team Easy to the IPO, Company A called the server more than 600,000 times around late August, near the service launch, in an attempt to secure FinCat’s backend data.
“If Replicated with AI… Difficult to Prove Even with Circumstantial Evidence”
The problem is that even with such circumstantial evidence, it is not easy to prove theft. This is because technology disputes between IT companies are primarily judged based on source code similarity. However, reverse engineering using AI coding tools can reproduce screen composition and operating methods in a short period without obtaining the original source code. This means that while visible functions and flows may be the same, different services with different code can be created.
Team Easy believes that Company A used AI to build the service. Some icons on the service screens also followed the default template format provided by AI agents.
CEO Guok stated, “If it is a case where logic was reproduced using AI and falls outside the scope of code similarity, it is not appropriate to prove theft,” adding, “There are no proper means other than waiting for the IPO’s investigation, and since the service in question does not immediately cease operations upon being reported, we are in a desperate situation.”
“Big Tech Also Headaches… Startups Even More Vulnerable”
The industry believes that such conflicts are likely to become more frequent in the future. This is because reverse engineering, which uses AI to reproduce and distribute for free the paid software of big tech companies like Adobe and Microsoft, has spread like a trend in the global IT industry, including the United States. Dedicated tools to assist with reverse engineering have also been shared on the AI development platform GitHub.
An industry official pointed out, “Big tech companies are suffering damage as software imitated through reverse engineering of their highly developed algorithms spreads,” adding, “For startups where ideas are the core rather than complex algorithms, the likelihood of becoming a target of reverse engineering is higher.”
CEO Guok said, “As the government encourages entrepreneurship with ideas, we expect special attention to be paid to protecting startup ideas and efforts.”
[Money Today Startup Media Platform Unicorn Factory]
in FUTURE
