We never debated Apple's right to defend their trademark, and it's pretty obvious they have the high ground on that one.
What was frustrating to us was the sheer number of Apple employees who recommended our product time and time again, with Apple management well aware of our product and its name. With millions of downloads (many from Apple employees), we're frustrated because Apple recommended and encouraged us and then--six years later--decided it was time to litigate.
Again, I'm not saying we're right. Apple is completely in the right to defend their mark, but I really don't think it it's in their best interest at all, and if we posed any serious threat, they would have taken action a long time ago.
* Edit: Sorry if this post is sloppy. I haven't slept in a while.
I'm guessing the Apple employees who were recommending your product were neither executives nor part of the legal department. I wouldn't expect Joe Smith in customer service to be aware of Apple's trademark policies.
Steve could have been more tactful, I suppose, but he at least took the time to respond, and gave you an honest, direct answer at that.
They have to protect their trademark, that's pretty much a given. But also, why take your case to Steve Jobs? He's not exactly known for being a "nice guy", his response is exactly what I would have expected from him.
Sorry you guys have to go through this, but in the long run I doubt you'll see (too) much pain from this. Good luck.
It sounds to me almost as though you're supposed to feel so cool about getting such an informal e-mail from Steve personally that you just happily do what he wants. The guy's full of himself.
Do you have any reason to believe they'll stop recommending your application after the name change?
Just make a big landing page 'iPodRip is now known as iRip'. That way you can keep all of the search engine juice you accumulated with the former name.
Pidgin (formerly gaim) survived a very similar situation to yours and the Pidgin homepage is still the top google result for 'gaim'.
You're right, they probably will continue to recommend it.
The issue is the lawyers. They don't want us to have the domain at all, which is clearly where most of the value lies.
And as Jobs doesn't care either way... there just seems to be a large disconnect between the decision makers at Apple (who don't care at all) and the law firm that represents them (the law firm is the 2nd largest in the world, with 2 billion in annual revenue).
Have you asked if they'll give you a grace period during which you can redirect people to a new domain, and/or allow you to bid on search keywords for 'ipodrip', so as not to destroy the goodwill built up by you product? If not, perhaps you should lawyer up and negotiate an orderly transfer. an IP lawyer might propose to Apple that they buy the offending domain off you, or that if you transfer ownership they will maintain a redirect to your website for a set period of time.
You are entitled to negotiate, since the letter you received from from Apple's lawyers, not from court whose decisions are final or limited to a narrow kind of appeal. IANAL, but this is basic common sense. In any case, you should be taking to an attorney to ensure that whatever action you do take protects you from future claims of liability.
What makes you think he doesn't care either way? It seems pretty clear that he doesn't care about the costs you'll incur by changing your name, but I don't see any reason to think he doesn't care about you infringing on his company's trademark.
I would view this as a technical challenge to survive a domain name change because as you pointed out, the trademark aspect is pretty clear cut and Jobs isn't going to intercede.
Talk to some SEO gurus because I'm certain there's a best practice for doing something like this.
To go back to the Pidgin/Gaim example, it doesn't appear that they own any gaim related domain beside a way out of date sourceforge one and they still own all of the top spots for 'gaim'.
edit: another idea, post an "ask HN" about it, I'd be curious to see what this crowd would come up with.
My suggestion would be to make the post generic so that the answers can benefit others, in addition to yourself, but this could be apparent (and I'm stating the obvious like an idiot).
Try contacting your own trademark/domain name lawyers. There may actually be a way to keep the domain name. You should not believe everything lawyers that are adverse to you say.
Well, it is a big company and you cannot treat individual employees as speaking for the company. Different employees have different responsibilities and the ones you interacted with probably weren't the ones responsible for protecting Apple's trademarks.
If I was Jobs and this is all I had to say, I probably wouldn't have replied to this email. It makes him come across as kinda noncaring especially with all of Apple's troubles with app developers.
If he really had to reply, he could've gone with "Not that big of a deal. Check your mail" and sent a cool Apple product for being a great developer. Lacking this, his reply comes across as cold to a genuine concerned developer.
Maybe, and I'm probably giving Jobs more credit than he deserves, but it could just be Jobs' way of saying - "Calm down dude, just change the name and chill out!". In other words, what looks like a major catastrophe to someone who hasn't faced this situation before is probably pretty minor in reality and replying in such a fashion puts the problem in its proper perspective.
No. Someone may produce this as prior art and demand a royalty free licence for another product at some other time. It's much easier to simply send C&D.
This isn't actually an uncommon practice for large corporations - the outside law firms charged with protecting IP and trademarks do so vigorously, and in many cases, autonomously. I don't think 'surprised' is the word, but I'd be...startled if anyone at Apple (with possible exception of Counsel) actually saw this letter before it went out.
As to SJ's reply, well, he's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation. He said what was on his mind and dealt with the issue quickly and decisively - who are we to fault that? (Tangential remark: as a bunch of startup founders/partners/employees, we've created a culture amongst ourselves of "corporate friendliness" - long, well-thought out letters from the execs about every little issue and ubertransparency through blog posts - and we build it into business practices, because that's what we think we need to compete. I'd like to see us all 20 years and a few billion dollars in revenue later - who really thinks they'll be acting much different than SJ at that point?)
Christ, what an asshole. Would it really have been that difficult to sit down at a keyboard and reply in the form 'Dear Mr Devor, [thank you for your letter] [here are the reasons for our trademark policy] [possible compromise] Sincerely, Steve Jobs'.
Don't want to to do it? Send it back to the legal department, who will at least address the guy like a human being. If they had told him back in 2003 that they felt he was infringing on their mark, that'd be one thing. But to passively acquiesce for 6 years and then pull th rug out from under him smacks of incompetence, and a one-line dismissal of a sincere attempt at compromise is just arrogant.
What was frustrating to us was the sheer number of Apple employees who recommended our product time and time again, with Apple management well aware of our product and its name. With millions of downloads (many from Apple employees), we're frustrated because Apple recommended and encouraged us and then--six years later--decided it was time to litigate.
Again, I'm not saying we're right. Apple is completely in the right to defend their mark, but I really don't think it it's in their best interest at all, and if we posed any serious threat, they would have taken action a long time ago.
* Edit: Sorry if this post is sloppy. I haven't slept in a while.