Comment by DanielStraight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielStraight | Hacker News Reader

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> You're probably going to need to deal with the WhatsApp legal team very soon.

And for good reason. Remember that trademarks are a consumer protection policy to avoid confusion. I was certainly confused at first. If it wasn't for the "Show HN" on the title, I might still be confused. The product name is "WhatsApp for Desktop", the page includes links back to whatsapp.com for the user to find more information, pictures copied directly from whatsapp.com (itself a fairly obvious copyright violation), and the file that's downloaded is called WhatsAppSetup.exe.

It is quite reasonable to think that someone could think this was official, easily missing the fine print that clarifies.

I strongly suggest anyone releasing software on the internet familiarize themselves with the relevant laws on trademark and copyright so they can avoid mistakes like this. There is no way this could stand up to legal scrutiny. Naming your product AnotherCompany PrepositionalPhrase is not something which presents an interesting legal debate, it's an amateur mistake.

I am not a lawyer. This comment is not legal advice.

Pretty much this. There are cases where trademarks are defended overly aggressive (e.g. recently IMAX vs arstechnica) but in this case a regular person could reasonably assume that this is official (domain,name,layout,colors).

My advice to the author would be to take the website down, change the domain,repostory binary name. There is no realistic scenario where this (as it is) survives thismonth.

I agree. 'Desktop client for WhatsApp' sounds about ok. I guess with a name like 'Unofficial WhatsApp for Desktop' would remove all ambiguities and also convey very clearly that you're not trying to trick people.

It might've been better to do what "Reddit News" did when it turned into "Relay for Reddit" [1].

So it shouldn't be "Whatsapp" for something. But "Something" for Whatsapp. I'm not entirely sure if that avoids all the legal issues or whether it was just something Reddit itself was willing to compromise on in the case of "Relay for Reddit", but at least you should start with that kind of default rather than shamelessly using other company's product name as if it was your own.

I think others who have used Google's name or other product names in their own Chrome extensions have taken a similar path. Like how "Gmail Checker Plus" (or something) became "Checker Plus For Gmail" [2].

[1] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=free.reddit.ne...

[2] - http://jasonsavard.com/checkerPlusForGmail

"[Name] for [Service]" is a popular format in the third-party client world, and it's one that's tolerated by all the big players.

Much older examples include "Plume for Twitter" and "FriendCaster for Facebook". In the case of the former, it was by agreement with Twitter: Plume used to be called Touiteur until Twitter made them change it.

You're seeing it more lately because Google recently changed the Play Store's app naming policy to forbid using the name of an existing service as part of your app's main brand, only allowing a special clause (e.g. "for [Service]") following the main brand. Also, around the same time, reddit changed their API policy to add a similar requirement.

In the long run, it's going to be beneficial for app developers because now they can take their name and use it for apps across multiple services. For example, the developers of Plume could create a "Plume for Facebook" app and so on, so they end up with a whole family of Plume apps, each one for a different social network.

Speaking as someone who created an extension for a Google service (Youtube) - the name change was forced on me. My extension was taken down from the Chrome store with guidance to change the name to "XXX for YouTube" with the requirement to follow their branding guidelines etc.

I totally agree "Whatsapp for X" implies that Whatsapp proper created an application for X while "X for Whatsapp" doesn't have the same implication.

So is "Desktop Client for WhatsApp" a better name?

I honestly don't think it's legal to use the name WhatsApp unless you propose a service totally different (If you sell chocolates and are called WhatsApp, there would not be any problem for example). Writing "Unofficial" or "desktop" won't change the fact that you propose the same service and using their name to promote it.

So WhatsApp for Desktop will become, "Message Reader for WhatsApp for Desktop"?

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