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Comment by Kye | Hacker News Reader

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After reading the albeit messy thread, no, it seems the names of the filters are the issue. They are trademarked. So the developer prepended them with the letter 'i' two hours ago. I'm not sure the developer understands the issue properly. You can't use someone else's trademarks in your competing product as if they were your own marks.

I’d like to introduce Hacker News to my new mobile device, the iiPhone! I’m sure Apple will leave me alone, because the name is different.

Cisco actually sued Apple over this. They settled.

Not exactly. Cisco had a product called the iPhone (versus suing because they had a product called Phone that Apple added i in front of)

I’m sure I could afford that!

Coming up next: iiiPhone, ivPhone, vPhone, etc.

Pixelfed: just remove filters. They’re a relic of a time when phone cameras were basic.

Google prevailed under fair use because they found the API names are organizational, Google only copied a minimal 0.4% of the Java codebase, and Android is not a directly replacement for Java generally. That's a pretty inapplicable decision here.

This is almost exactly the same facts as Lotus v. Borland though, which the Supreme Court failed to make a decision on. So all we really know is that the First Circuit thinks it's allowed, but we have no idea how the Supreme Court would rule.

Even if we're charitable to Pixelfed: Google could afford to take the case all the way up to the Supreme Court. Can Pixelfed? They should just rename the filter names. The developer's immature antics make the project look unprepared for large scale adoption that the Fediverse seems to be on the cusp of. Donations to a defense fund will be going to waste.

It's absurd to think a highly technical case around fair use for API compatibility would bear any sort of relevance here.

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