Nokia threatens London startup over 'HERE' | Hacker News Reader

Nokia threatens London startup over 'HERE'

bbc.com

40 pointsadzicg17 comments

As I read this story, Nokia appear to have a reasonable complaint in this case.

It looks like they have spent significant resources building a brand around that particular term in a closely related field, including registering trademarks. It then looks like a start-up has come along, not checked on the viability of its own proposed branding before adopting it, and run straight into basic laws about trademarks and passing off.

Maybe a real lawyer can tell us otherwise, but as far as I can see the fact that "here" is a widely used word in the English language doesn't seem to matter. After all, it's not as if you'd get far starting an on-line text editor and putting a big button labelled "Word" on the home page so you could write your first word.

Being a start-up doesn't entitle you not to follow the same laws as everyone else (notwithstanding the wishful thinking we sometimes see on certain Internet forums!) so if the report is accurate then it seems like Nokia do have reasonable grounds to object.

(Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not expressing any opinion on whether I think generic terms should be protected by the law, I'm only commenting on the situation as, to the best of my knowledge, it actually is today. Also, there are two distinct uses of the term "here" by the start-up mentioned in the article, one a prominent feature of one app and the second the name of a separate app, and I'm not arguing that these should or will necessarily be treated the same way. But launching an app with the same name as someone else's registered brand in a related field seems ill-advised.)

I think there is case law related to Hoover in the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark

I heard a while back that Google were worried that if people started using the word Google as a verb for websearches it would make trademark/copyright difficult.

That's the wrong example I'm afraid. Hoover is an example of a trademark which became generic because it wasn't enforced strongly enough. "Here" is already a descriptive word and while Nokia can use it for branding a product/service they can't make any claim over it's descriptive use.

The fact that "here" is a widely used word does matter. What Nokia's trademark buys them is the right to name a product or business "here". It doesn't given them ownership of the word "here" when used with it's descriptive meaning, whether or not that use occurs in a similar product/business context. Given that the offending app allows people to notify others that they are "here", it's open to debate as to whether or not their use of the word is "merely descriptive". It's unlikely though.

I agree that it probably would have been wise for the startup to avoid using that name, but they could well be within their rights to. Own the downside: should that be permitted, it guarantees that they won't be able to protect the name themselves either.

OK, but how is an app called Here merely using the word for its descriptive meaning?

If you were only referring to the Here button in the other app made by the start-up, then I agree there seems to be some room for interpretation. Even then, though, if the fundamental justification for protecting trademarks and having related laws about "passing off" is to ensure that customers aren't duped into thinking they're dealing with someone else, an app that is named one thing but uses a related app's name so prominently in its UI seems to be at best a grey area.

The name is very generic so I hope this will not fly. Unless this is just a weird form of advertising, cause I haven't heard of either of the products until now, and I live in London, where apparently Nokia spent millions on adverising of their "here"

It's not advertising per se. Their mapping product is called HERE, and has been for a few years. It's not Nokia Maps or something else, but HERE. The web interface is at http://www.here.com and there's also native apps by that name.

> "It's ludicrous - people say, 'I'm here,' to announce their arrival, which is why we have it as a service.

> "As a small start-up trying to deliver value to users we don't think a multi-billion dollar company will be affected by this.

> "Life is hard enough without Goliaths squashing Davids - maybe they should focus on creating a better mapping service than Google or Apple than squishing a minuscule business."

The guy is being a real hypocrite, it's just not possible to brand an app "HERE" when another company makes an app under the same brand, and owns a trademark. It's not even possible that making a Google search did not come to their minds when naming their product, and they tried to fly with it.

Also, HERE Maps provides data for BMW, Mercedes, Garmin, Hyundai, Pioneer, Volkswagen Toyota, Oracle, Amazon, Bing, SAP, Flickr, Yahoo!. Is that better than Google/Apple? Yes.

Trademarks don't cover "merely descriptive" uses of the word. The question is whether the Lowdown "HERE" app falls into that category. It's possible, though I wouldn't bet on it.

I wonder if they could call it the "THERE" button instead.

That seems a more promising idea. Then you could use all kinds of plays on words in your advertising to clearly distinguish the brands: "Why stay Here when you could already be There?" and the like.

So "startup doesn't check if name already used"? I don't see how Nokia is at fault here.

So we can also say that when someone use "i" in a sentence is "likely to deceive members of the relevant public" that the sentence is part of an Apple product?

No, we can't also say that.

You don't have a great sense of humor.

HN is not an open-mic comedy show

Possibly yes: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409669,00.asp

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