Baffling question for me

So let’s say that ya’ll thought of something, something unique that you just thought on your own but then someone else had the same idea that already existed then he saw your idea, can he rightfully say that that idea is rightfully his?

(forgive my overthinking skills :smiley:)

Taking this to its logical conclusion/extreme means there can be no unique ideas: is the idea of coming up with ideas your own idea?

On a more serious note, it’s entirely possible for more than one person to come up with a same/similar idea or arrive to such a conclusion on their own or independently. When people have same kind of ideas but take them to different directions is how ideas develop, and this development should be a priority over technicalities of who “owns” the idea.

In cases of trademark or copyright I think the dynamic changes. Even so, it’s easy to get stuck in a seemingly endless loop: if I end up having an idea that is way too similar to something someone already came up with, I can change my idea or take it to another direction, right? What if after the changes I made the idea ends up being too similar with another persons idea? I make changes again, but the same pattern repeats itself. As such, the question one should be asking is not if their idea is unique, but rather what is their (own) interpretation of it.

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Nothing is really considered ip until it exists past an idea and has something concrete behind it.

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Even if two people come up with a very similar idea on their own, once that idea is turned into a concrete thing, the two might have a similar idea but they become two different projects. So your own take on this idea or that idea is in itself its own thing. So in conclusion you don’t need to dwell on it.

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I wouldn’t dwell on it too much. “Ideas” are such wide concepts that two people thinking of similar things around the same time is almost an inevitability, but there’s so many ways you can expand upon an idea that even if two people came up with identical ideas, there’s no way they’d remain the same after iterations upon that idea.

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There are limited things a human can think of, lots of humans and lots of time for humans to think. Therefore the concept of original ideas doesn’t exist.

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No, this would mean original ideas are finite, not that they never existed.

Is it because the things that can be thought of are limited, or that the human capability for thought is limited, or both?

People come up with similar ideas independently all the time. I don’t think you need to worry about it so much, honestly. Besides, in my humble opinion, so-called “originality” is overhyped, anyway, and skillful execution undervalued.

It is a problem in the specific instance of someone hearing about someone else’s idea, taking it for themselves having not previously come up with it on their own in any capacity, and then trying to put it out into the world in such a way as to diminish the original idea haver’s ability to do the same, but I don’t think that’s actually all that common.

If you run into someone else who just coincidentally had a similar idea to you completely independently of yourself, just enjoy the funny Same Hat moment and carry on, is how I see it.
If it’s for a story, you’ll surely each put your own spins on the ideas, anyway, making each creation a unique expression of the one of you who made it even if there’s overlap in the underlying base concepts.

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