The latest from TechCrunch
- ChaCha Sues HTC Over HTC ChaCha
- Readability Tries Again With Apple — Has The Subscription Policy Already Shifted?
| ChaCha Sues HTC Over HTC ChaCha | Top |
| You could see this one coming from a couple of miles away: ChaCha , the questions and answers service provider, is suing smartphone maker HTC over trademark infringement. The lawsuit is obviously the result of HTC’s decision to name its recently unveiled ‘Facebook phone’ the ChaCha . Sure enough, ChaCha Search, Inc., as the company is officially named, owns the ‘ChaCha’ trademark in the United States (and Europe for that matter). ChaCha has a good case, as HTC’s branding of its new phone is sure to confuse people. After all, ChaCha has historically put a lot of focus on providing a service on mobile phones, with a mobile website and dedicated apps for iOS devices, BlackBerry and, well, Android handsets. The lawsuit was filed last Tuesday in Indiana Southern District Court. Ironically, it was filed around the same time online payment company Xoom Corporation filed a trademark infringement suit against its rival Motorola after the latter named its new Android-based tablet computer, slated to launch in the U.S. today, the XOOM . You have to wonder whether these hardware manufacturers don’t do enough trademark and branding research before they launch massive campaigns for products, or if they simply don’t care and deem the risk for infringement lawsuits an acceptable, calculated one. We’ll keep an eye on how this one plays out. From where I’m searching, ChaCha.com still shows up in the first search results when I search for ‘ChaCha’, but the phone was only unveiled last week and the HTC website is already on the first page of search results, too. The HTC ChaCha smartphone will be available to customers across major European and Asian markets during Q2 2011. In the United States, HTC said it plans to bring it to market ‘later this year’ exclusively with AT&T, probably before the end of the second quarter. CrunchBase Information HTC ChaCha Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Readability Tries Again With Apple — Has The Subscription Policy Already Shifted? | Top |
| @readability Readability The Readability iOS app has been re-submitted. Coming soon: our open love letter to Apple. about 13 hours ago via web Retweet Reply A couple days ago, Readability was pissed off . In an open letter to Apple, they noted that the new subscription policy “smacks of greed”. And they threatened to abandon Apple’s platform in favor of the open web. This message resonated with many, as there’s a huge amount of unease about Apple’s new policy in the developer community. But now, just two days later, Readability has re-submitted their app to Apple for review. And apparently, a “love letter” to the company is forthcoming. So why the change from war to peace? Has Apple’s policy already changed? Well, no — not yet, anyway. Readability’s Richard Ziade said his tweet was a “joke” and had this to say: We did re-submit to Apple with an explanation of why we think they should approve Readability. We did not speak to anyone at Apple. We have no idea if they'll approve it. We just explained ourselves as best we could through the appeal process. So no good news yet, but there may be hope. The reason for Readability initial outburst was because Apple rejected their app on the grounds that it didn’t use their in-app purchase system — the one that would require them to give 30 percent of their revenue to Apple. The company thought this was unfair and didn’t make a lot of sense because they think of themselves as a software as a service (SaaS) company that doesn’t actually sell content, but a service. This matters because an email supposedly sent by Steve Jobs shortly after this incident claimed that the subscription rules were meant for “publishing apps, not SaaS apps”. This is a bit of a gray area because Readability does sort of serve up content, but it’s not their content, it’s re-purposed content. Still, Apple taking 30 percent of their revenues would drastically alter their business model, and could have forced them to shut down, or simply not do an iPhone app. How Apple approaches the app now post-Jobs comment will say a lot about their intentions for the policy going forward. As Ziade says, “stay tuned!” CrunchBase Information Apple Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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