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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

Very cool. OSM has been the default map on my phone for years. I do worry that the name is a little close to Google's trademarked Street View (see list of Google TMs here: https://www.google.co.uk/permissions/trademark/trademark-lis... ). They might wish to avoid an unnecessary lawsuit by calling it something else.

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The name should be OK since there has already been an OpenStreetView since 2009.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenStreetView_(2009)

Which could also be a name Google objects but just hasn't found out about yet.

Street View itself has been around since 2007.

"Street view", at least in English speaking countries is a generic name for a street view service. It's most probably not a valid trademark alone (but Google StreetView might be.)

> a generic name for a street view service

What is "a street view service" other than Google Street View?

Bing has a similar service called Streetside. I can't find any usage of the phrase to mean anything other than Google's service.

Mapillary uses the phrase "street level photos"

It is a registered trademark as well: http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:dq9...

I think in a dispute, Google would very likely win.

> I think in a dispute, Google would very likely win.

In the US. But OSM doesn’t have to care about that – the worst that could happen would be them being banned from doing business in the US, or their profits being seized.

Which is no risk to them.

OpenStreetView isn't directly associated with OpenStreetMap or the OSM Foundation.

It's run by the US company Telenav (all over the terms: http://openstreetview.org/terms/ ).

I guess individual users are giving OpenStreetView/Telenav some permissions via OpenStreetMap oauth.

No permissions per se, we just didn't want to have users create YAA. We figured if you're going to be interested in OSV you'd already have an OSM account anyway.

That needs to be fixed, OSV should be owned and run by the OSM folks.

The OS mapping agency in the UK has been using "Street View" as a brand name for over 10 years. Google only use "Google street view" I think.

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