Trademark spat over the word ‘Paper’ by FiftyThree and Facebook
On Thursday last Facebook rolled out ‘Paper’ labelling it as a brand-new way for users to explore and share stories. The problem is, a New York based app developer called FiftyThree Inc. wants the social network giant to change the name of its new product, as FiftyThree already has a product with a similar name.
‘Paper by FiftyThree’ is the name of a very popular and award-winning app from the company FiftyThree Inc. FiftyThree’s ‘Paper’ is an iPad based application which allows users to sketch, draw and create designs on an iPad. The app had won Apple’s award in 2012 for the best iPad app. In order to counter the new Facebook application, FiftyThree has decided to file a trademark for the name ‘Paper’. They have already trademarked the name ‘Paper by FiftyThree’.
Chief executive and co-founder of FiftyThree, Georg Petschnigg, said that the rollout of the new product from Facebook came as a surprise, as the ‘Paper’ trademark is already owned by his company. “Thursday morning, I woke up and was greeted by press announcements and emails from investors and friends and tweets asking if I’ve seen the news about Facebook,” Petschnigg told while speaking to MarketWatch. “It was a surprise to our customers, to our partners, to our developers.”
George Petschnigg had also written on the FiftyThree website that Facebook had apologised for keeping the name similar to that of the app developed by his company, but had still named their application similarly. Of course, Facebook had not responded to the demands to change the name.
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