Yang Liu and her colleague is working on improving the FotoPlace. FotoPlace has been upgraded many times since it came out in December 2014. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Q: Honestly, my first movie-like photo was made using Meitu (a popular picture-processing application in China). Shortly after FotoPlace, Meitu developed the same function. Later on, Camera 360 (a similar application to Meitu) got this function too. Has FotoPlace been influenced by this phenomenon?

Y: It definitely has. At first we were a bit upset. We felt that people in the Internet industry were too ready to follow suit. But now we have come around, because the movie mode has become a standard configuration for many picture processing as well as social communication applications. We are glad that we set up the standard. Besides, we think that the "soul", the core concept of our application is not easy to copy. People can replicate the processing mode, but they fail to produce the same film language as well as the storytelling mode on our application. All in all, we should stay calm. After all, it's quite a common phenomenon in such a big market.

Q: What do you think of the trend of the copying competition? Did it ever occur to you to take some measures against competitors who copied your app?

Y: In China, it's not easy to apply for intellectual property or even a commercial brand. The procedures cannot be done online. It usually takes two or three years to apply for the intellectual property right for a new app version, during which common Internet products can produce dozens or even hundreds of new versions. So we actually have not adapted to the trend yet. It's hard for small groups to engage in a lawsuit with big companies over intellectual disputes, because we don't have energy, money or manpower for this.

Our government encourages entrepreneurship and innovation. The real innovation comes from a spirit of originality. But the educational system in China is test-oriented and it is common to copy others in the Internet marketplace. So there are many novel innovations abroad but few in China. This is sad. Maybe in the future the environment will change, and people will have the concept of originality. Then this situation will gradually improve. Changes seem to be impossible today.