

Ask HN: My cofounder is freaking out about getting sued. - cyphersanctus

I have a serious problem with my co-founder and I’m not sure how to handle it. We just launched a more complete version {1} of the popular Yo App and we are getting lots of downloads. But now, he is freaking out about getting sued for using a similar name and layout as the Yo app.
Mostly he is worried about having Yo in the app title, which I don’t see any problem with. However, now he changed the app title in our play store account a second time without telling me so in response, I blocked his access.<p>His main argument for not using Yo in our name, is that we shouldn’t be gaining traction from what others have built. However, I think tries to make up arguments why we should change the name. Also, in my opinion our app is significantly different to Yo and he is simply getting worked up about us getting sued for copyright infringement or intellectual property theft.<p>Moreover, having yo in the name is crucial for our app to gain traction as it communicates to people that they can do “one-word” communication to their friends similar to Yo, just in a bit of a different way.<p>I think my question is, is there any way we could get sued realistically? The thing is that we’re in German jurisdiction, so there is not much anyone can sue us about outside of Germany and if it goes through, it would take a year or so, wouldn’t it?<p>{1} https:&#x2F;&#x2F;play.google.com&#x2F;store&#x2F;apps&#x2F;details?id=com.messenger.labs
======
jeffmould
IANAL, but I would tend to agree with your co-founder.

First, you openly admit that you are using the "Yo" brand name to drive
adoption to your app: "having yo in the name is crucial for our app to gain
traction".

Second, you market it as a "more complete version" of the Yo app.

Third, just because you are in a different country than Yo, doesn't mean that
they still can't/won't try to sue you. They just got a fresh round of funding,
obviously have bigger plans for the brand, and as such will probably want to
squash out someone infringing on their brand quickly, especially one that is
marketing and branding to solely based on their brand. Just bringing the
lawsuit will cost you money that you probably don't have and will easily put
you in debt without the case even getting to a court room.

Fourth, the name "Yo Messenger" makes it sound like a different product under
the Yo brand thus causing easy confusion with consumers and I am sure any
court would probably see similar. By your logic if back when Facebook was just
getting started if I had launched an app called "Facebook Messenger" then that
would not be infringing on the Facebook brand.

------
helen842000
I would think the first sign would be a cease and desist / Abmahnung

Yo or more specifically Yo! has been trademarked in many countries since the
mid-90's as part of the Yo! Sushi brand.

It depends on what you are building towards. Are you getting revenue from the
app? If you were to have to pull the app from the store is that your whole
business gone?

------
miguelrochefort
Call it "Hey".

------
weddpros
call it wazzup

~~~
LarryMade2
Dude!

