

Ask HN:  Can Google and I launch products with the same name? - beerfarmer

Oh no! If the start-up world wasn't difficult enough already I recently ran into a an issue that might sink my little bootstrapped ship a little faster than anticipated.  I can change my name and re-brand my business but after four months of preliminary marketing and research efforts I'm in 'that' place where I need to start promoting my businesses, follow up with my contacts and hopefully make a little money.<p>My scenario is a little unique in that I developed my start-up ( I couldn't find anything else in the market I liked )to help me launch a few other business ideas with more traditional businesses models.  I did not Trademark my start-up name but I have been live for about 4 months and have made contact with over 800 interested artists/businesses ( I used Sonicbids.com to run a promotion to attract artists and musicians).  I feel my intent to use this name has been shown. I have also developed a mobile app that plays off and works to compliment the start up name which reinforces the idea that re-branding is possible but not ideal.<p>I threw out a question to the team at Sprouter and this was their response.<p>"The good news is that just by making use of a brand name, you require certain trademark rights in it. Therefore, if you have made any public use of this name prior to Google making its announcement, you might possibly have certain common law trademark rights in it. However, if this is something that has merely been in development and you have made no public use of it, or even if you have made only limited public use of it, you will have some difficulty in asserting your rights against Google. Your best course of action at this point is to retain a lawyer who can review the specifics of your case and consider whether or not contacting Google at this stage is a good option available to you in order to reach some sort of co-existence agreement."<p>I question the idea of 'limited public use', in that I developed the platform to help me launch and market my businesses with the thought that any additional users of my platform would be a bonus as I don't need millions of users to make my model profitable.<p>Google is using the name for their Google TV 2.0 platform for Android and their first press release showed up around June 22, 2011.  I'm using the name as a social network with a mobile app and have been live since mid March of this year, and although I have gained very little traction, the idea is I can prove the viability of my platform by using it to market my other business ideas (clothing, music and blog/app).  Once that happens I will market my platform more aggressively to outside users with proven vs speculative results.<p>fishtank(google) vs. http://fishtaank.com (dave)<p>Any thoughts?  Feedback?<p>"From the mountains, through the hillside the crazy river water flows.  It takes my to my pot of gold buried underneath a little stone.  I'll find a horse and ride away and take out across the open plains.  I'll turn into the wind and go to find out what my story knows."
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scorpioxy
Regardless of the answer, do you really want to go up against Google's legal
team?

Your post makes it sound like you don't have money to throw around on lawyers,
but even if you did, I would question the wisdom in that. As a bootstrapper,
you need to choose your battles.

If it were me, I would re-brand just to avoid the hassle of going against a
big company with an army of lawyers.

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tnorthcutt
You don't have a legal question, you have a marketing question. The answer is
to change your name if you think Google's use of it might overshadow yours or
confuse your users/prospective users.

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beerfarmer
I can handle a marketing challenge. My Immediate market is not the most
progressive when it comes to technology so most folks around here have no idea
what Google TV is. Thanks for the feedback :)

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sorbus
Consult a lawyer. That's really the only advice that anyone can give at this
point, other than that you should do your best to avoid getting into a lawsuit
with Google.

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beerfarmer
I'm not really in a tech center and the lawyers I've contacted have suggested
I operate with the name as long as I can. I'm not to keen on that idea as I
don't want to create a bad name for myself but I really need to start
marketing ASAP.

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sorbus
While I'm not in any way a lawyer, that's the advice I'd give too. There seems
to be little potential for confusion between a TV platform and a social
network (trademarks are within a field of business, so two different
trademarks could use the same name as long as they're in distinct fields with
little chance of confusion, as I understand it), so yeah.

~~~
beerfarmer
_trademarks are within a field of business, so two different trademarks could
use the same name as long as they're in distinct fields with little chance of
confusion_

I was thinking the 'field of business' would be mobile app development but my
mobile app uses a different name so theoretically if the above statement is
true I should be OK. Thanks for the feedback!

