Someone stole my code and is selling an identical extension with my code. What do I do?

[Hexadecimal]

Hi,

There's this guy who has a few services that are not related to mine, but those services are dealing with the same niche.

I had created a feature that does the same thing that one of his services does, in a totally different way.

So this guy started threatening me on Facebook to take down the feature or else he will create the same extension as mine. I have no problem having a competition as creating this extension with all of those features will take some time to create and by that time, I will enhance mine.

But the threat was a little overboard because he has no patent whatsoever on the feature and so I was not going to take down a feature that I worked really hard on.

A month goes by and suddenly he releases a Chrome extension, identical to mine.

I look at his code and low and behold I see my very own code that I have written, identical, one to one. 

He did modify a few things to make it seem as if it's his.

But he didn't even bother to change the stylesheets or the class names. (I have abbreviated some of the classes with the name of the software and he's still using it as is)

If he would have written the entire thing without copying anything, I wouldn't mind and I would respect him for taking the time to try to compete with me, but instead he is threatening me and is constantly copying my code.

This started about a month ago and I was hoping he wouldn't continue the development, but as time goes by, he is releasing more and more of my code and is selling it as if it is his.

After he put it up, I had gotten another threat to take that feature I mentioned earlier down or else he will continue. 

I refused to do so as he does not own any rights to that "feature".

He now has two extension both containing my code.

He is selling the extension for around $20.

I had to minify and obfuscate my code to somewhat avoid him stealing my code to some degree, I know it doesn't exactly stop him but it makes it difficult for him.

And I know that it is against Chrome's TOS. And I don't want to get banned, but I'm really fearing here.

Please help me. 

What are my choices here? What can I do to stop this guy?

[PhistucK]

Every extension page in the web store has a report abuse option. Use it.

☆PhistucK

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[Hexadecimal]

I did, I'm just scared that mine would get taken down instead of his because I obfuscate my code, specifically because of him!

☆PhistucK

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[wOxxOm]

Not sure anyone pays attention to that judging by the presence of a scam app that uses the well-known Tampermonkey extension's name. Just look at the number of its users: 16,276. So the scam app has been in the store for months/years. I've seen it several months ago and didn't pay attention, then ~10 days ago I've reported it via the Report abuse link. Nothing changed. Somehow I doubt I was the first one to report the abuse, so my guess is that Google simply doesn't have the manpower for the task.

[Ramsundhar Madhavan]

I was just wondering, why the code has to be open for an chrome extension?

During submission of the extension, Chrome team can ask source map files of the source file. Which they can use to validate the extension approve it or reject it.

Hoping to hear from Chrome Extension Team.

Warm regards,
Ramsundhar Madhavan

☆PhistucK

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[David]

Is this the place to ask of the Google personnel for a response? I thought a while back there was an announcement in the Google Group, they moved (most?) discussions to StackOverflow.

☆PhistucK

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[Antony Sargent]

You should contact the webstore support team directly about webstore issues like this:

https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/contact/developer_support/

☆PhistucK

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