There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here about what Apple's HealthKit is. HealthKit is simply the name for the API framework Apple is making available to developers, following in the naming conventions of UIKit, WebKit, SpriteKit and so on.
HealthKit is not, however, a name that consumers will ever actually come across in using their device. Apple's own app on top of HealthKit is simply called "Health", and I highly doubt the string "HealthKit" appears anywhere in that app's UI.
Apple is still using 'Healthkit' as a brand, even if that brand is only targeting developers rather than users.
Moreover it is a piece of software and falls within the same trade mark class (different people can trade mark the same word in different classes of business).
There is a clear conflict with the existing brand, that is likely to cause confusing and diminish the untility of the existing brand. Apple should change the name.
True, but the HealthKit.com can't really establish any sort of claim to the IP - the name is both generic and descriptive and is therefore ridiculously hard to protect without huge traction.
This is a good qualification, but not all "products" need be consumer-facing products. That's just a play on words for "retail" sales vs business or professional sales.
Its a seperate point to say its a 'feature' not a product and thus is not actually sold to anyone (and thus distinct).
It's a huge distinction if formal legal action happens because Apple can establish quite easily that they have relied on the Kit format for previous software, whereas HealthKit.com doesn't (AFAIK) have any major traction in the software space. Law student here, IANAL, so take this with a huge grain of salt.
Either way, in Australia, both parties would apply under Classes 9 and 44 which covers all computer software and medical services respectively. It's likely that Apple will win on class 9 as "Kit" is far better known in the software community than "HealthKit.com"; and arguably 44 too, depending on Healthkit.com's traction in the medical field.
It's unlikely that Apple's HealthKit and HealthKit's HealthKit would cause confusion in the market - but it makes a silly story to say that Apple's Health (which may have overlapping functionality with the preexisting HealthKit).
And regardless, there's unlikely to be overlap between the markets for these two products. HealthKit.com is somewhat hard to navigate, but the impression I get is that their product is aimed at medical practitioners. I doubt they overlap with the mobile developer demographic to any significant extent.
Though I'm curious to hear from someone with more legal knowledge than me: would the fact that there's very little chance of collision between these names protect either party from legal repercussions?
What about the effect of search engines on brand value? Whereas, before, the existing HealthKit was probably the top result, after an invasion of Apple HealthKit development sites they may be kicked to the third page hellban.
Naturally, this same reasoning can be used to challenge the use of the same trademark in a different domain, something clearly accepted by law.
The fact that has Apple has more money than they know what to do with is the real factor for legal repercussions.
It's one thing to have theoretically defensible IP, and other thing entirely to actually be able to.
Assuming equal resources backing the legal teams, it would probably be sufficient that they are both forms of software, as all software trademarks are lumped together in the single category. There might be some sort of passing off action one way or another but it would be more likely to come from Apple than HealthKit.
There seems to be overlap between the Health app and Healthkit.com which I suppose is the real issue. Hard to tell if Healthkit truly got sherlocked though, because I can't tell what they do from their website past management software.
Regarding the trademark issue: if the other company does use its name as a brand as well as a trade name, it may have trademark rights in its name, even if they have never applied to register it. [1]
It was certainly well known by Apple that healthkit.com was already registered and in use by a company already working on a very similar product.
As for copyright, it does not apply to names: What is not protected by copyright? ... Names, Titles, Short Phrases, or Expressions [2]
Finally, Apple seems to think it's easier asking for forgiveness than permission when it comes to naming products [3]
It looks like this company doesn't own any trademarks or copyright on the HealthKit name, but Apple does. Not sure how they can be upset if they haven't even tried to protect their brand.
I don't think Apple is too concerned. If HealthKit had filed for trademarks internationally then they'd have a leg to stand on.
Instead they're left moaning about how Apple has named some technology, not a packaged product per-se, with a name similar to their company.
Apple's legal team was no doubt aware of HealthKit, had done some analysis, and decided that there was no real issue. HealthKit can do their thing in Australia.
That's not true, at least not in the US, and here's a lovely example of it.
A few years ago DC Comics decided to sue DC Shoes over their logo which, like DC Comics logo at the time, used the letters DC and a star.
Turns out DC hadn't trademarked the logo, despite having used it (and variants) for decades so they lost.
DC Shoes HAD trademarked it and successfully counter sued and DC Comics, despite having used a similar logo for a lot longer, were forced to pay DC Shoes for the rights (at least until they ultimately changed their logo).
Swiss clocks. Noooo, wait, they lost-or-settled that one because it would look too bad for them to play hardball (as usual) over a public icon that well known.
Aussie law student here. IANAL. I haven't studied IP in a year or so but I'm not convinced that the startup has a huge claim to the name HealthKit at all. I've looked at both US and local law in the past so I'll try and explain in case it helps any founders reading this.
"HealthKit", in the context of both healthkit.com and the dev kit describes the intend purpose of the IP. The startup seems to produce a software "kit" for health practitioners and the Apple version is obviously a dev kit that deals with the new health app.
Any trademark that describes intended purpose is called a 'descriptive mark' (lawyers are an imaginative bunch) and are generally really hard to protect. You need to show evidence of market use, and for lack of a better word, traction. Apple actually seem to have the stronger argument here: MapKit, GameKit, UIKit etc. have been used for ages and are recognised in the software community as being associated with Apple. This would be categorised as a software trademark and I'm not sure that the startup can establish a strong argument that they've a) established their brand in the software market and that b) they should be able to exclude Apple to prevent confusion. This is consistent with both Aus and US law to my knowledge, and successfully establishing themselves in the Australian market, or filing a trademark here won't bind the US anyway.
Bottom line, the more generic and descriptive your name (in context), the harder it will be to successfully defend it. Owning a .com doesn't count for much, if anything (even trying to register a generic descriptive word + .com - mattress.com was registered unsuccessfully IIRC). You need to get eyeballs on it and sell stuff to win this with a common law/equitable trademark. Considering I hadn't heard of HealthKit.com until this happened they might struggle with this.
If you're a founder and you want to protect your name, pick a name that is something arbitrary or suggestive. Healthkit.com's claims would be much stronger if it was named Potato or Voozle and Apple used the same name for a dev kit. It makes it far harder to communicate your product quickly but thats the tradeoff. Names that invoke your product through onomatopoeia, like 'Twitter' strike a good balance between effective communication and defensibility. They're bloody hard to come up with though.
Hopefully, HealthKit.com use this as an opportunity to get their message out to their target audience, they're getting an audience on hacker news but its doctors they should be going for.
As an aside, it's interesting to see how much of the media is confusing the HealthKit dev kit with the Health app. Helps with the story I guess.
I have scrolled through a lot of comments to find the first one seizing on that particular bit of website implementation fuckery. I'm glad it's not just me fuming a bit about that!
I think they're preempting a problem that doesn't exist. There's many APIs that don't own the .com of the same name, but it never causes much of a problem...
The domains you've listed are all common words, so claiming exclusive use of them would not be reasonable. HealthKit is not a common word, so it seems more reasonable for an entity to expect exclusive use of it as a trademark.
I don't think you can expect to slap two common words together and prevent anyone from using those words in any way everywhere.
If you make up some new word Exxon etc. then maybe.
For slapping two common words together there have to be sensible limits on everyone else being prohibited. If you own things like onetwo.com great that may well be a reason for someone else to be dissuaded from naming a consumer product that because they want an easy to remember domain.
Thinking all uses of HealthKit are bad seems more to me like Facebook thinking anyone using "book" prefaced by something else is doing wrong - which I think is silly.
I would be amazed if there are not many previous uses of health kit - just removing the space hardly seems an amazing transformation to me.
Funny but... Some time ago Apple was after Polish grocery store [1] since they have an apple in their logo (not even closely similar to Apple's logo) and use domain name a.pl...
I think that hilarity of above mentioned action still remains unbeaten, however, as I see, Apple is trying very, very hard.
That case is different. Apple was clearly in the wrong there.
Here Apple's gone ahead and released an API (product?) with the same name as an existing company. They're not going after the company legally. Atleast, not yet.
But perhaps that comes after Apple's healthkit is more well known than the existing HealthKit.
Without been specific to Apple, it's a common practice of large multinational companies to perform international searches for registered and unregistered trademarks as well as any common usage of the marks they are interested in using. If any potential registrations, or strong claims on the mark, are found in the same field of business a specialist will probably be contracted to perform a more in depth investigation.
I would be surprised if Apple had not taken the time to assess your claims on the HealthKit mark. I can only guess that they did and decided that there was either:
a) no conflict between your businesses and hence use of the mark - in which case you should be happy, yet careful not infringe on Apple's usage (keep your eye out for a trademark registration very soon).
b) they don't think you have any strong rights on the mark and chose to use it.
It may be fun to ask around the office and see if anybody remembers been contacted with out of the ordinary questions regarding the length of your company's operations and asking questions about the HealthKit domain/name in general.
Something like this happened with the Macintosh trademark as well -- Apple had to buy the right to the name from McIntosh Laboratory, which made high-end audio gear. [1]
When you register a trademark, you do it for a specific region (country, EU...) and for a particular purpose (industry). In principle you could try to trademark a name everywhere in the world for every purpose imaginable, but it would be very very hard since any owner of an existing trademark can object if they think there is a chance of your name causing confusion with theirs and the resolution process can take time and be ultimately unsuccessful for you. So nobody actually does that.
Strength of a trademark really lies in both a) being registered and b) being actively used (first by you, but also by others). I think it is more useful to think of a domain as a digital equivalent of a sign hanged above the shop entrance. I think it affords you roughly the same level of protection.
IANAL, but I have registered a trademark years ago and had at that time spent some effort in getting acquainted with laws. They may have changed since.
Unrelated to the topic, but the scrolling mechanism on that site is terrible. I can't use my wheel, arrow keys or page down/up. I have to use the arrow images in the bottom left corner to scroll the page content.
HealthKit is not, however, a name that consumers will ever actually come across in using their device. Apple's own app on top of HealthKit is simply called "Health", and I highly doubt the string "HealthKit" appears anywhere in that app's UI.