Has anybody been conned, (as I stupidly was) by an App called Audacity for iPad. I paid approx £24.00 for a 1 year subscription for an app that is garbage. there should be a way of stopping these people, especially as they have called it Audacity and used the same icon/logo.
I believe the logo is trademarked but “audacity” is an English word so I don’t know if that’s protected.
The code is open source so anybody can copy, modify, and/or even sell it, as long as they make their code and revisions open source and follow the open source licensing requirements.
In essence, trademarks are about stopping things being “confusingly similar”. So you can’t have another audio editor and call it Audacity and give it the blue headphones logo. But you probably can have a note taking app with an A as a logo and call it Audacity. Similarly, Apple Computers and Apple Records can in principle coexist as one does macbooks and the other is the label of the Beatles.
@Ian1 I go through the appstore every month or so and throw those apps out. If you still can find one in it, please send me a link!
Apple Records (Beatles) sued and (obviously) lost. I don’t think they sued until Apple Computer introduced Apple Music. Apple Computer probably had better lawyers…
The parties had a dispute about a contract they made between themselves and eventually settled, so unfortunately nothing interesting about trademark law itself fell out of that dispute.
Slightly interestingly, our trademark is on class 9, which contains “mainly apparatus and instruments for scientific or research purposes, audiovisual and information technology equipment, as well as safety and life-saving equipment”, and in particular:
Scientific, nautical, surveying, electric, photographic, cinematographic, optical, weighing, measuring, signaling, checking (supervision), lifesaving and teaching apparatus and instruments; apparatus for recording, transmission or reproduction of sound or images; magnetic data carriers, recording discs; automatic vending machines and mechanisms for coin operated apparatus; cash registers, calculating machines, data processing equipment and computers; fire-extinguishing apparatus.
I like the idea of having Audacity-branded fire extinguishers one day.
PHUC THINH PG VIET NAM COMPANY LIMITED, is the company that appears to be pedalling the rip off app. I found it by simply typing in Audacity in the search option of Apple App Store.
I don’t know how to send a link to show you. If you can tell me how to send link, I will.
thanks, I found it! I’ll take it out of the app store.
If you want to get back your money, you should contact either Apple Support or your bank; I think you have a good case that you got tricked by some counterfeit product
This is the email they give: info@phucthinh.site, I think this is the link:
Funny story. In the early '90s Apple added a system alert sound called “Sosumi” (pronounced “so sue me”) to Mac OS as a result of their long-running court battle with Apple Records. The creator of the sound said the name “sosumi” was Japanese to sneak it past the legal department. 
This topic was automatically closed after 30 days. New replies are no longer allowed.