Free market for me but not for thee.
Anyway, it’s just a copyright takedown. Change the name and move on.
Anyway, it’s just a copyright takedown. Change the name and move on.
Also, not every name containing a trademark is a trademark violation; for instance, while "UberCheats" violates the trademark on "Uber", a name like "Watcher for Uber" would not be. The general "XYZ for Trademark" as a descriptive phrase tends to sidestep trademark issues. But on the other hand, renaming it "RideshareCheats" would sidestep the legal issue entirely and also open the door to generalizing it to cover other such services.
Ultimately it’s up to the courts to decide. If your app could reasonably be confused for an official product of “Huevo” corp, it would constitute trademark infringement.
Otherwise, as the other poster says, it's just about avoiding confusion. There can be Bob's Hardware and Bob's Grocery store as separate trademarks.
This looks like a pretty clear trademark violation!
Rideshare Cheat Monitor for Uber would be MUCH safer than resuing an extremely similar sounding name. Or just RiderCheat Monitor.
Given they don't think their name is similar to UberEats / Uber, it makes me wonder whether they are scam of some sort as well.
The second issue is who decides whether it's infringing or not. I don't think Google should be calling that, the takedown should come from a court with the authority to make such orders.
Basically Google is turning into Team America: World Police, and I don't like that route. It's not that I think they should keep the name, it's just scary that once again, Google has completely fucked up someone's life without any kind of legal order.
The platforms don't have a lot of confidence in the timeliness of claim resolution through the court process, they have 10's to 100's of thousands of issues to address weekly. Trademark ripoff apps, apps ripping off copyright, content issues (child abuse / apps that promote violence). Waiting for legal orders on any of this would be time consuming and costly. So we are clear, courts take YEARS to resolve these things. They also operate globally. Developers in Israel and Egypt and the EU and the US. Cross border legal enforcement through the courts is very hard at scale currently and there are political differences as well.
My own sense, if govt provided more timely, effective and accurate relief and determinations, folks would be more comfortable with court involvement. But at least on commercial side, given both the politization of courts (which makes rulings both unpredictable and highly variable based on judges involved) and the delays in the process there is just an understanding that to maintain functional ecosystems the platform owners need to take a more hands on approach.
I'm in another field where basically everything has gone to arbitration agreements without exception because the court process is just broken for resolutions on larger scales.
Companies are getting very careful on this.
"If a subscriber/enrollee doesn't agree to arbitration, will Kaiser Permanente decline enrollment? A: Yes. If a subscriber/enrollee does not agree to arbitration, they (and their dependents) will NOT be able to enroll in a Kaiser Permanente plan."
So this is extending to nonprofits as well. What's really interesting is business to business (ie, both parties roughly similar negotiating authority) also going to arbitration. The big issue on the business side though is arbs tend to split awards (it's a safe call) rather than just destroying one person even if the case calls for that, and there is no appeal (which business doesn't like, they want at least one other crack at the apple).