An ugly situation recently arose out of Chris Hooley's "drinkbait" campaign at Pubcon (which was not only a great idea, but a well-executed one, to boot). Liana Evans developed a remarkably similar campaign called "hatbait" that she began at SES Chicago. Until tonight, when I read Chris' post on the subject, I had assumed that the two were connected and were benefiting the same party. That's not the case:

...after our conversation (which I assumed was in confidence) she wrote a blog about how “I was upset about her HatBait fun” and everywhere I saw DrinkBait, she was right there with HatBait.  She even started to downplay my original idea in our “controversial” conversation and on her blog.  To me, it looks like she is trying to one-up me on purpose. 

It’s frustrating, and I am not sure what to do.  I don’t want to be known as the guy who gets in blogger flame wars and I don’t want to be a crybaby, but since she’s the one blogging about it, she wrote the story as people will remember it from her point of view.  I already know this: I can’t win in this situation. 

Now everywhere I look,”her brilliant idea” is popping up.  Kudos to her for putting so much into it, but seriously, it is hard for me not to feel slighted.  I wanted that so bad.  I told a few close friends, and Liana, about what I would be doing with my career and I was really excited.  I feel like she knocked the wind out of me, and I have been pretty bummed out about it.

Liana mentioned this on her blog as well:

Apparently, I've upset Chris Hooley with my HatBait fun, for that I deeply apologize.  Some people have come up to him and said I cheapened and made his "DrinkBait" spammy.

I will admit, the name I idea I took from him.  Its easy to remember and it explains it exactly as it is...

...There was no "spam" intended, there was no "copying" intended, and if people wanted to link to what I did - GREAT!...

...The hats - were not his idea (if you know Chris, hats just aren't his thing) - they were mine, the contest was mine, linking back to folks was mine.  The concept - was totally and undeniable Chris Hooley's, the guy is a great out of the box thinker.  I just modified the idea to try and include everyone else and put a different spin on it to make it fun for everyone.

So, for the concept of HatBait, please thank Chris Hooley.  And again, Chris, I apologize and hope you continue with your crazy fun ideas.

I don't want to start a conversation on loyalty or friendship here - I've run into both Chris and Liana several times (at conferences) and while I'm not personally close with either, have always felt that both were great people that I'd enjoy spending more time with in the future. What I do want to address is Chris' intellectual property quandry.

Assuming Chris' story is accurate (which Liana's post appears to verify), he created a business idea that was easily patent-able. The components include:

• Taking photos of people holding up signs or items showing off a URL ending in "bait"
• Posting those photos on the web
• Marketing the images as something bloggers and websites would link to after the event
• 301'ing the URLs back to his own site and running a blog that covered the various events

I won't argue about the value of the idea, but it certainly has enough unique qualities to make it protected by law (if my interpretation of what our lawyers have told us in the past about these sorts of things is correct). I don't have enough of a legal background to know if Chris could, conceptually, claim rights to the idea and gain control of hatbait.com in a legal dispute, but my intuition tells me that if we were talking about Perez Hilton and Jason Calcanis, there'd be a lot of lawyers in the mix.

Over the last year, we've actually dealt with some similar issues at SEOmoz. We've got a few great ideas under our collective caps and protecting these until they can bear fruit is no easy task, particularly for a small company. I must say that I empathize with Chris here - I know how frustrated and angry I'd feel if someone else had created a "sandbox detection tool" over the past 6 months while ours has been out for repairs, or if an SEO tool had slightly modified Page Strength and attempted to launch that. Would we sue? Honestly, I don't know.

This brings me to my final thoughts - how do you protect yourself against intellectual property theft? What should Chris have done? Is there something that we should be doing at SEOmoz to protect our ideas and how do those apply to the web community as a whole?

I have little doubt that many, many people who read this blog are constantly brainstorming clever ideas for their businesses, the web, and their connections, but how many of us are taking these seriously enough?

p.s. My personal take on the hatbait v. drinkbait controversy - had I known the full score, I probably would not have participated, not out of any angst toward Lianne, but rather respect for what Chris had put together. I know how I'd feel if everyone started linking to an SEObooze Page Toughness Tool. My suggestion to both parties - let it drop and move on. Liana can definitely come up with another idea to pursue (she's a very smart lady) and Chris can stick with his "bait" at the next show (fingers crossed that it's sock-puppet bait and I get to wear the Mike Grehan puppet) and bygones will be bygones. Just look at what Chris has already done with his "so-cheesy-but-I-can't-look-away" SEO Boy Band post.