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My name is Ryan Spahn and operate a start-up called, http://Sleep.FM - The Social Alarm Clock.

Recently via blog posts I saw a competing iPhone app(competitors are outside of US where we have not received our registered mark - yet) where in their marketing materials they use our registered mark ("The Social Alarm Clock") in a similar and confusing way. This has led the blog and twitterosphere to report and echo inaccurate information that harms & dilutes our mark/brand/service.

I wrote a blog post (http://sleep.fm/blog.html) about this and I am interesting hearing feedback if what steps we can do to further strengthen our mark and if we have any legal recourse against the parties mentioned in the post.

Thank you ryan

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You are worrying too much about something that do not makes you more sales. You can probably spend the time for improving products improving you web site. For example I can't understand from you site what you product do. – Ross May 29 '10 at 17:52
Thanks Ross. Appreciate the feedback. As for what our product does or is .. it's an Alarm Clock online on mobile apps that wakes you up to spoken weather reports, status of flight (on-time, delayed, canceled) and the social aspect waking up to friends messages(b-day) or media they sent to wake you up. – Ryan Spahn May 29 '10 at 18:02
As long as others are not using it as a trademark, I don't think you can claim a violation. If they say they have "a social alarm clock" then there is likely no violation. Why worry about your competitors? Just deliver better services than they do. – TimJ♦ Jun 1 '10 at 16:09

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

and welcome to this site! :-)

If I understand this correctly, you have "The Social Alarm Clock" registered and approved as a trademark in the US, but not elsewhere.

You could start off by getting the contact info for the competitor, call their CEO, and in a friendly way say that you have this phrase protected as a trademark, would they kindly abstain from using it... Being a nice guy is often helpful, and there is a real chance that they are unaware of its trademark status.

If that fails, you could have your lawyer write a "cease and desist letter" to the infringing party.

And last but not least, you could go for the middle man. It's a sad state of affairs, but you could complain to Apple that the competitors application infringes on your trademark (assuming it does). As Apple has no incentive to get involved, they could very well decide to remove the application from AppStore.

Before you do anything drastic, think this through together with your lawyer. Legal actions are always expensive and a huge emotional drain, so upholding your trademark without having to go to court would be strongly preferable. You should go see an intellectual property lawyer.

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HI Jesper Thank you for the thoughtful comment and advice! Really appreciate it! thanks again! – Ryan Spahn May 31 '10 at 5:28
In my experience, Apple does not remove apps for claims of trademark infringement. – user6603 Mar 10 '11 at 22:18
up vote 0 down vote

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It's been about 9 months since I posted this question. The competitor that prompted this post was our first, but since then we have seen & dealt with many others who have un-successfully, attempted to use our mark.

We welcome competition into the space we introduced but want to inform developers and companies in the US the use of our mark is prohibited. We are working towards securing the rights to the mark internationally.

cheers, ryan

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please post comments using the 'add comment' link, and not as a new answer. – Michael Pryor Mar 10 '11 at 15:46

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