
Apple likes our name and so do we - JacobAldridge
https://www.healthkit.com/blog
======
_frog
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here about what Apple's
HealthKit is. HealthKit is simply the name for the API framework Apple is
making available to developers, following in the naming conventions of UIKit,
WebKit, SpriteKit and so on.

HealthKit is not, however, a name that consumers will ever actually come
across in using their device. Apple's own app on top of HealthKit is simply
called "Health", and I highly doubt the string "HealthKit" appears anywhere in
that app's UI.

~~~
001sky
This is a good qualification, but not all "products" need be consumer-facing
products. That's just a play on words for "retail" sales vs business or
professional sales.

Its a seperate point to say its a 'feature' not a product and thus is not
actually sold to anyone (and thus distinct).

~~~
_frog
And regardless, there's unlikely to be overlap between the markets for these
two products. HealthKit.com is somewhat hard to navigate, but the impression I
get is that their product is aimed at medical practitioners. I doubt they
overlap with the mobile developer demographic to any significant extent.

Though I'm curious to hear from someone with more legal knowledge than me:
would the fact that there's very little chance of collision between these
names protect either party from legal repercussions?

~~~
sergiosgc
What about the effect of search engines on brand value? Whereas, before, the
existing HealthKit was probably the top result, after an invasion of Apple
HealthKit development sites they may be kicked to the third page hellban.

Naturally, this same reasoning can be used to challenge the use of the same
trademark in a different domain, something clearly accepted by law.

------
miles
Regarding the trademark issue: _if the other company does use its name as a
brand as well as a trade name, it may have trademark rights in its name, even
if they have never applied to register it._ [1]

It was certainly well known by Apple that healthkit.com was already registered
and in use by a company already working on a very similar product.

As for copyright, it does not apply to names: _What is not protected by
copyright? ... Names, Titles, Short Phrases, or Expressions_ [2]

Finally, Apple seems to think it's easier asking for forgiveness than
permission when it comes to naming products [3]

[1] [http://www.quora.com/Trademarks/If-someone-has-a-company-
nam...](http://www.quora.com/Trademarks/If-someone-has-a-company-name-but-has-
not-trademarked-it-can-I-trademark-it-and-sue-them-b-c-of-the-name-even-
though-they-used-it-first)

[2] [http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-
rights/copyri...](http://www.legalzoom.com/intellectual-property-
rights/copyrights/5-things-you-cant-copyright)

[3] [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/71042,cisco-expects-deal-
with-...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/71042,cisco-expects-deal-with-apple-
on-iphone-trademark.aspx)

~~~
kennywinker
It doesn't change anything you've said, but it's worth noting that Apple has
backed down on something like this when pressed:
[http://appleinsider.com/articles/05/02/18/apple_to_rename_re...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/05/02/18/apple_to_rename_rendezvous_technology_bonjour)

------
owenwil
It looks like this company doesn't own any trademarks or copyright on the
HealthKit name, but Apple does. Not sure how they can be upset if they haven't
even tried to protect their brand.

They filed the trademarks some months ago:
[http://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/30/healthbook-healthkit-
tra...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/30/healthbook-healthkit-trademarks/)

~~~
shakethemonkey
They own a common-law trademark, which is perfectly defensible. Apple is in
the wrong here.

~~~
astrodust
In what country, Australia?

I don't think Apple is too concerned. If HealthKit had filed for trademarks
internationally then they'd have a leg to stand on.

Instead they're left moaning about how Apple has named some technology, not a
packaged product per-se, with a name similar to their company.

Apple's legal team was no doubt aware of HealthKit, had done some analysis,
and decided that there was no real issue. HealthKit can do their thing in
Australia.

------
re
From [http://blog.daemonl.com/2014/06/healthkit-apple-stole-our-
bu...](http://blog.daemonl.com/2014/06/healthkit-apple-stole-our-business-
name.html)

> But not only HealthKit, The whole 'Kit naming scheme

Apple's been using the "kit" naming convention for a _much_ longer time
(AppKit, IOKit, WebKit)--I think it originates in NeXTSTEP, if not earlier.

~~~
daemonl
Fair point about the series, but apple own i* and *Kit. Anything else?

~~~
daemonl
Oh, and rectangles and apples.

~~~
spacemanmatt
Swiss clocks. Noooo, wait, they lost-or-settled that one because it would look
too bad for them to play hardball (as usual) over a public icon that well
known.

------
vicbrooker
Aussie law student here. IANAL. I haven't studied IP in a year or so but I'm
not convinced that the startup has a huge claim to the name HealthKit at all.
I've looked at both US and local law in the past so I'll try and explain in
case it helps any founders reading this.

"HealthKit", in the context of both healthkit.com and the dev kit describes
the intend purpose of the IP. The startup seems to produce a software "kit"
for health practitioners and the Apple version is obviously a dev kit that
deals with the new health app.

Any trademark that describes intended purpose is called a 'descriptive mark'
(lawyers are an imaginative bunch) and are generally really hard to protect.
You need to show evidence of market use, and for lack of a better word,
traction. Apple actually seem to have the stronger argument here: MapKit,
GameKit, UIKit etc. have been used for ages and are recognised in the software
community as being associated with Apple. This would be categorised as a
software trademark and I'm not sure that the startup can establish a strong
argument that they've a) established their brand in the software market and
that b) they should be able to exclude Apple to prevent confusion. This is
consistent with both Aus and US law to my knowledge, and successfully
establishing themselves in the Australian market, or filing a trademark here
won't bind the US anyway.

Bottom line, the more generic and descriptive your name (in context), the
harder it will be to successfully defend it. Owning a .com doesn't count for
much, if anything (even trying to register a generic descriptive word + .com -
mattress.com was registered unsuccessfully IIRC). You need to get eyeballs on
it and sell stuff to win this with a common law/equitable trademark.
Considering I hadn't heard of HealthKit.com until this happened they might
struggle with this.

If you're a founder and you want to protect your name, pick a name that is
something arbitrary or suggestive. Healthkit.com's claims would be much
stronger if it was named Potato or Voozle and Apple used the same name for a
dev kit. It makes it far harder to communicate your product quickly but thats
the tradeoff. Names that invoke your product through onomatopoeia, like
'Twitter' strike a good balance between effective communication and
defensibility. They're bloody hard to come up with though.

Hopefully, HealthKit.com use this as an opportunity to get their message out
to their target audience, they're getting an audience on hacker news but its
doctors they should be going for.

As an aside, it's interesting to see how much of the media is confusing the
HealthKit dev kit with the Health app. Helps with the story I guess.

------
bruceboughton
HealthKit is just the name of the API, like WebKit, UIKit, etc. I doubt it
will be the name of the public facing product.

~~~
tjogin
Correct, the app is called Health.

------
andyhmltn
(Off topic) Jesus christ. The hijacked they scroll event and replace it with
buttons

~~~
grahamel
Oh my, that's awful. Especially with two different down arrows.

On the about us page there isn't any buttons at all, so you can't read all the
text.

~~~
spacemanmatt
"Why yes, disabling the default UI controls seems like a brilliant plan."

------
credo
Many iOS frameworks are named with a "Kit" suffix (UIKit, MapKit, StoreKit,
EventKit etc.)

There is nothing odd in some new iOS frameworks following a similar
convention.

If anything, I think Apple's new framework is going to generate a lot of
marketing/PR value for the company. I think they realize this :)

~~~
shard972
Lets have a look at how depressed the owner of the company must feel right
now:

[http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/apple-
swallows...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/apple-swallows-
aussie-startup-companys-name-healthkit-and-their-worldembracing-idea/story-
fn9evb64-1226943793182)

Yep, looks devastated.

~~~
stedaniels
Because news.com.au sent a photographer round to take the photo straight away.
Or because news companies never use stock or press photography.

------
damian2000
I think they're preempting a problem that doesn't exist. There's many APIs
that don't own the .com of the same name, but it never causes much of a
problem...

angular.com cocoa.com node.com flask.com bootstrap.com backbone.com

etc.

~~~
Blahah
The domains you've listed are all common words, so claiming exclusive use of
them would not be reasonable. HealthKit is not a common word, so it seems more
reasonable for an entity to expect exclusive use of it as a trademark.

~~~
curiouscats
I don't think you can expect to slap two common words together and prevent
anyone from using those words in any way everywhere.

If you make up some new word Exxon etc. then maybe.

For slapping two common words together there have to be sensible limits on
everyone else being prohibited. If you own things like onetwo.com great that
may well be a reason for someone else to be dissuaded from naming a consumer
product that because they want an easy to remember domain.

Thinking all uses of HealthKit are bad seems more to me like Facebook thinking
anyone using "book" prefaced by something else is doing wrong - which I think
is silly.

I would be amazed if there are not many previous uses of health kit - just
removing the space hardly seems an amazing transformation to me.

------
dsymonds
Meh, I can't see anyone honestly getting confused between the two. Apple's
HealthKit
([http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/health/](http://www.apple.com/ios/ios8/health/))
is for developers to work with, and this other HealthKit
([https://www.healthkit.com/about-us](https://www.healthkit.com/about-us)) is
for patients and medical practitioners.

~~~
geocar
People are already getting confused about it.

------
piokoch
Funny but... Some time ago Apple was after Polish grocery store [1] since they
have an apple in their logo (not even closely similar to Apple's logo) and use
domain name a.pl...

I think that hilarity of above mentioned action still remains unbeaten,
however, as I see, Apple is trying very, very hard.

[1]
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409669,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2409669,00.asp)

~~~
davidgerard
They did this in Australia too - sued Woolworth's Supermarket for having a
logo that looked like a W made from apple skin.
[http://www.theage.com.au/business/apple-bites-over-
woolworth...](http://www.theage.com.au/business/apple-bites-over-woolworths-
logo-20091005-ghzr.html)

I wondered at the time when Apple would sue actual apples.
[http://newstechnica.com/2009/10/05/apple-inc-sues-apples-
for...](http://newstechnica.com/2009/10/05/apple-inc-sues-apples-for-
trademark-violation/)

------
tommoor
Apple missed a perfectly good opportunity to call it "MedKit" if you ask me

~~~
philmcc
"Health" feels positive to me. "Med" feels ameliorative. Stay Healthy vs Stay
Medicined...

~~~
msane
Parent is making a game / DOOM pun.

~~~
Blahah
Medkits go at least as far back as Wolfenstein (1981).

~~~
msane
Ahah yes.

------
staunch
_Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone_

------
tomdotom
Apple will have certainly Googled your domain.

Without been specific to Apple, it's a common practice of large multinational
companies to perform international searches for registered and unregistered
trademarks as well as any common usage of the marks they are interested in
using. If any potential registrations, or strong claims on the mark, are found
in the same field of business a specialist will probably be contracted to
perform a more in depth investigation.

I would be surprised if Apple had not taken the time to assess your claims on
the HealthKit mark. I can only guess that they did and decided that there was
either: a) no conflict between your businesses and hence use of the mark - in
which case you should be happy, yet careful not infringe on Apple's usage
(keep your eye out for a trademark registration very soon). b) they don't
think you have any strong rights on the mark and chose to use it.

It may be fun to ask around the office and see if anybody remembers been
contacted with out of the ordinary questions regarding the length of your
company's operations and asking questions about the HealthKit domain/name in
general.

------
dctoedt
Something like this happened with the Macintosh trademark as well -- Apple had
to buy the right to the name from McIntosh Laboratory, which made high-end
audio gear. [1]

[1] [http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/30-years-mac-how-
macintos...](http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/30-years-mac-how-macintosh-
got-its-name-24578/)

------
Frozenlock
I'm a little confused by the domain names and trademarks relations.

If I use a trademark, say Ziglou, can I expect to have a right to every domain
names with Ziglou?

Ziglou.com, Ziglou.net, Ziglou.org, Ziglou.some-new-top-level-name...

Can I expect to also have right to a top domain? Ziglou.ziglou?

Inversely, can one expect to have an established trademark just because of a
domain name? In this case, HealthKit?

~~~
samastur
No, you shouldn't expect that.

When you register a trademark, you do it for a specific region (country,
EU...) and for a particular purpose (industry). In principle you could try to
trademark a name everywhere in the world for every purpose imaginable, but it
would be very very hard since any owner of an existing trademark can object if
they think there is a chance of your name causing confusion with theirs and
the resolution process can take time and be ultimately unsuccessful for you.
So nobody actually does that.

Strength of a trademark really lies in both a) being registered and b) being
actively used (first by you, but also by others). I think it is more useful to
think of a domain as a digital equivalent of a sign hanged above the shop
entrance. I think it affords you roughly the same level of protection.

IANAL, but I have registered a trademark years ago and had at that time spent
some effort in getting acquainted with laws. They may have changed since.

------
vincentbarr
Given the usability of said company's website, Apple would be doing web users
a favor acquiring that domain.

------
mcmillion
I have to click a button to scroll the text on your site.

------
CmonDev
In the world of cyber-squatting and start-up-coming-soon pages, the one that
gets more famous first wins.

------
jfranche
How did the whole Apple Records v Apple thing work out...

------
mrfancypants
They never registered the business name. The folks in charge at the (non-
Apple) Healthkit should learn how to do business before having a whinge.

Move along, nothing to see here.

~~~
mrfancypants
downvote without contributing to discussion? smooth.

------
blueskin_
And now just wait for these guys to be patent trolled into oblivion :(

------
sspiff
Unrelated to the topic, but the scrolling mechanism on that site is terrible.
I can't use my wheel, arrow keys or page down/up. I have to use the arrow
images in the bottom left corner to scroll the page content.

~~~
vidyesh
Also no permalink to the blog post is a horrible path. The old published
content is already lost in the void.

------
dang
Related: [http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/apple-
swallows...](http://www.news.com.au/finance/small-business/apple-swallows-
aussie-startup-companys-name-healthkit-and-their-worldembracing-idea/story-
fn9evb64-1226943793182) and [http://blog.daemonl.com/2014/06/healthkit-apple-
stole-our-bu...](http://blog.daemonl.com/2014/06/healthkit-apple-stole-our-
business-name.html).

------
pling
Like Apple's lawyers would give you a choice anyway and they know it. Bend
over peons, we now own your trademark.

