TechCrunch AI's report on this lawsuit points to a critical, second-order problem for the AI infrastructure layer: the customer is often the competitor. The core product at issue—an MCP gateway—is built on an open-source protocol, making the barrier to a 'good enough' internal build lower than for proprietary, novel technology. In our view, this dynamic suggests that startups in crowded, standards-based middleware categories may need to prioritize defensibility through deep enterprise integrations and unique data moats over pure technical features. The real lesson may be that in a market where the protocol is free, the value must be in something a large company cannot easily replicate internally.