What to do when another developer uses your App's name?

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Created Aug ’22

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I'm hoping fellow developers will have advice for me as Apple refuses to even acknowledge this issue. My app is "Camera Lucida" and is a highly rated app that has been continually improved upon since 2010. Another developer fairly recently created an app that is similar in nature, but very, very different and very poorly reviewed. The developer named the app, "Camera Lucida ・". The extra dot at the end of the name does not show up on the iOS springboard, settings page and other locations. As a result, I continually am getting support emails from people purchasing this copycat app. This is because my support web page is easily found on the web. This app is very negatively impacting my brand. Apple refuses to do anything about it - even refusing to acknowledge what I'm typing in my support emails. I've even asked them about getting Trademarks, etc. - but because the name wouldn't be exactly duplicated, Apple won't even say if that would work. Does anyone have any suggestions?

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Answer 1

Claude31 OP

Aug ’22

You posted a similar message one year ago.

Did you contact Developers support at Apple to clarify ? Was the issus solved last year ?

Contact Us category should be Notify a problem with App name subcategory.

You should also explain the situation on your web page and on the app information on the appstore, warning customers to be cautious.

What I don't understand:

As a result, I continually am getting support emails from people purchasing this copycat app.

How is it ? The copycat cannot have indicated your email !

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Answer 2

endecotp OP

Aug ’22

Yes, I also get support questions from people who have apps with very similar names to mine. Some differ only by punctuation.

Claude, the users just Google something like "AppName* support" and it finds my AppName support web page with email link, rather than a page for "AppName*".

The only real difficulty is that sometimes it takes me a while to work out that they are describing a different app. Now I often ask "Please send a screenshot" straight away.

Apple don't, as far as I am aware, make any promises about app name uniqueness. In particular, if your name is purely a description of what the app does (as Camera Lucida seems to be), then you can expect other apps with the same functionality to use very similar names.

There isn't a solution to this. You just have to live with it. Maybe next time, choose a more fanciful name that you can register as a trademark.

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