TL;DR: A giant American toy company threatens to sue Matchbox. Having no resources at hand, Matchbox is forced to change it’s name to Tuneup.
On the 14th of March, I received an email from Apple (via the giant toy company) with the following content:
The developer of the reported application is using the registered
Matchbox trademark in the description of the application without
authorization from the right holder. Also he is offering services by
unlawfully using the registered trademark which is causing bad
influence for the Matchbox brand values. Furthermore, this application is
not authorized from the right holder. This is a trademark infringement
causing damages to our client xxxxxxxx, the right holder for the
Matchbox intellectual property. I would kindly ask you to proceed and
remove the infringement/application from all stores worldwide.
This company, had the trademark for Matchbox registered under the following classification codes: US 001 002 003 005 021 022 023 026 029 036 037 038 039 041. Each and every G & S description was related to toy products, fabrication, stationery products, and manufacturing processes.
Looking up these classification codes on the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website, absolutely none of them are for computer software, or anything that even crosses paths with Matchbox.
The million dollar question: If there was absolutely no case for “confusingly similar”, why did Matchbox change it’s name?
It’s simple really. Big guys always bully the small ones. They threatened to sue us if we didn’t stop using it. Even after proving to them that it wasn’t even remotely infringing to their use of Matchbox, they wouldn’t budge. Had I fought them legally, I would’ve won. Easy peasy. However, due to the lack of resources, I had no choice but to change it’s name.
If I had to call Matchbox anything other than Matchbox, I’d call it Tuneup. “Tuneup” is imagined by Joelle Fernandes, the co-founder of Let’s Tuneup.