Hacker News

39 points by speckx 3 hours ago | 13 comments

modeless 21 minutes ago

Steve Jobs on cell phone companies: "We're not very good at going through orifices to get to the end users." [1] Today, Apple is the orifice.

[1] https://youtu.be/IzH54FpWAP0&t=530

vessenes 2 hours ago

Sort of buried the lede here -- Apple uses the Inkwell name and has a trademark. This is just not going to get approved. Or, to quote Jobs talking to the iPodRip developer "Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."

vegadw 2 hours ago

used. Apple used. It's legally a dead trademark, so Apple is claiming ownership of something they've already abandoned, but enforcing that nobody else can reclaim it, despite being a good name. That's not right, they don't just get to name squat.

armada651 2 hours ago

What's legal doesn't matter, it's their store, if they want to claim they own the word Pear too they can do that.

I think holding that kind of power over devices people own is problematic, but I seem to be in the minority here.

jasonjayr 36 minutes ago

Amusingly, a bunch of series of teen shows used to use "Pear PC" to get around the trademark issue on all their on screen technology...

eikenberry 24 minutes ago

+1 .. the problem isn't that Apple is denying their app, the problem is the developer decided to submit it to the Apple store.

etothet 2 hours ago

Perhaps you’re right. Apple's App Store review can be a rough process. Then again, a search of “Inkwell” in the App Store shows plenty of apps that are named “Inkwell”, many of then writing-related.

vessenes 2 hours ago

Oh I didn't say they'd be consistent. But once it's raised, it's going to be really tough.

m463 32 minutes ago

maybe apple should have changed ipod to avoid confusing it with a pre-existing music device:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_6_POD

jxdxbx 35 minutes ago

The top comment there is not correct. You do not have to "defend" trademarks or they "expire."

You lose a trademark if it becomes generic, regardless of how hard you tried to keep it from being so. Obviously if you let a bunch of actual infringements slide you're on the way to becoming generic, but all that matters is whether the trademark IS generic.

But, when lawyers write letters to people saying "you can't say escalator or Zamboni" you can just ignore them. Using a trademark in writing in a way that a trademark owner does not like is not infringement.

esquivalience 24 minutes ago

In the business, we often refer to that sort of reminder activity as "defending" against genericism. Practice varies by country but the point is often to show that you are not passively allowing the trade mark to become generic. Yes, you can often ignore letters (unless they request an answer or make a threat, which might be a different situation) - but it's usually a good idea to spend some time looking at it from the other person's perspective first.

jxdxbx 18 minutes ago

Yeah, but there are a TON of things that trademark lawyers do that are counter-productive. I put vaguely aggressive letters from trademark owners in that category, such as Monster energy drinks thinking they get to control how others use the word "monster."

I remember when the Apple logo stickers Apple packed in had a little (R), which was later dropped, since it's ugly and not legally required. But no doubt some lawyer advised putting it there to begin with.

etchalon 12 minutes ago

The terrible consequences of App Review is how dependent you are on whether the App Reviewer you get is either very good at their job or very bad at their job.

Mediocre ones seem to cause the most problems.