I just looked this up. Instagram currently owns the most relevant live trademark for "INKWELL" [1] (class 009). Apple's registration [2] is indeed dead / cancelled.
You could possibly try to register the "INKWELL" trademark for an RSS reader, since that seems quite differentiated from Instagram's claim, but IANAL, so who knows how successful that process would be.
> Inkwell is listed on Apple’s own trademark page.
I had an app rejected, because it had the word "Finder" in its title ("Virtual Meeting Finder"). I had to change the name of the app, and it wasn't too big a deal, because the original name was fairly unimaginative (as it was supposed to be).
But it does sound like the whole app name is in conflict with a registered Apple trademark. It's unlikely to ever be approved.
jxdxbx
The top comment there is not correct. You do not have to "defend" trademarks or they "expire."
You lose a trademark if it becomes generic, regardless of how hard you tried to keep it from being so. Obviously if you let a bunch of actual infringements slide you're on the way to becoming generic, but all that matters is whether the trademark IS generic.
But, when lawyers write letters to people saying "you can't say escalator or Zamboni" you can just ignore them. Using a trademark in writing in a way that a trademark owner does not like is not infringement.
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vessenes
Sort of buried the lede here -- Apple uses the Inkwell name and has a trademark. This is just not going to get approved. Or, to quote Jobs talking to the iPodRip developer "Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."
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etchalon
The terrible consequences of App Review is how dependent you are on whether the App Reviewer you get is either very good at their job or very bad at their job.
Steve Jobs on cell phone companies: "We're not very good at going through orifices to get to the end users." [1] Today, Apple is the orifice.
[1] https://youtu.be/IzH54FpWAP0&t=530
I just looked this up. Instagram currently owns the most relevant live trademark for "INKWELL" [1] (class 009). Apple's registration [2] is indeed dead / cancelled.
You could possibly try to register the "INKWELL" trademark for an RSS reader, since that seems quite differentiated from Instagram's claim, but IANAL, so who knows how successful that process would be.
[1]: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results/86733442
[2]: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/search/search-results/78126699
> Inkwell is listed on Apple’s own trademark page.
I had an app rejected, because it had the word "Finder" in its title ("Virtual Meeting Finder"). I had to change the name of the app, and it wasn't too big a deal, because the original name was fairly unimaginative (as it was supposed to be).
But it does sound like the whole app name is in conflict with a registered Apple trademark. It's unlikely to ever be approved.
The top comment there is not correct. You do not have to "defend" trademarks or they "expire."
You lose a trademark if it becomes generic, regardless of how hard you tried to keep it from being so. Obviously if you let a bunch of actual infringements slide you're on the way to becoming generic, but all that matters is whether the trademark IS generic.
But, when lawyers write letters to people saying "you can't say escalator or Zamboni" you can just ignore them. Using a trademark in writing in a way that a trademark owner does not like is not infringement.
Sort of buried the lede here -- Apple uses the Inkwell name and has a trademark. This is just not going to get approved. Or, to quote Jobs talking to the iPodRip developer "Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal."
The terrible consequences of App Review is how dependent you are on whether the App Reviewer you get is either very good at their job or very bad at their job.
Mediocre ones seem to cause the most problems.