I wrote a pretty snarky post the other day about the Weather HD app in the new Mac App Store. My distaste for the app stems from the fact that Weather HD is a name that is already in use, by an excellent weather app for the iPad and iPhone, made by a different developer.
The developers of Weather HD for Mac, Presselite, saw my post and took the time to email us their response to it. Here it is, in full and un-edited:
We have already developed Weather applications such as Weather for iPad (available since iPad launched) and Weather Live (iPhone), and we chose the name Weather HD for the Mac version as it is for high resolution screens. “HD” is a common word that is often added at the end of app names, as you may know.
Vimov thinks we are using its name, which is totally false, this name is not their property. We asked Vimov to provide us with the evidence (trademark certification) so we could take the request in consideration, but Vimov was unable to send us such documents confirming their rights on this name. Therefore, Vimov cannot claim a name when they don’t have any rights on it.
Our goal is not to make squatting, and we don’t have any problem with Vimov, our application is very different from their iPad application, and everyone can clearly see the difference just by looking at the screenshots on the Mac App Store…
While I appreciate the response from Presselite, and I imagine their assertions about the trademark / legal aspect of things may well be accurate, I still think theirs is quite a crass move with the naming of their Mac app. If the guys at Presselite are still in the mood for responding, here’s a couple of questions I have for them:
If you were proud of your own iOS apps, then why not use one or other of those names for your Mac App Store entry?
Why grab the name of a direct rival on iOS if you didn’t think either their name or their app or both were better than yours?
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TAGS: Weather HD for Mac
