I have my IPhone app almost ready. Now I would like to give it away to testers in ad-hoc mode. How do I protect the name of my application so that no one steals the name during the test?
+8
A:
Trademark it. May sound like a cop-out answer, but it's not that big of a deal (or very expensive really) to file for a trademark.
Eric Petroelje
2009-03-11 13:17:26
Seconded. Additional benefit is that you make sure you won't have pull out your own app when you go public because you are infringing on somebody else's trademark.
Laurent
2009-03-11 13:19:56
I am from Europe. Would I file a worldwide trademark? Seems like a little overhead for my pet project.
Steilpass
2009-03-11 13:44:24
@Steilpass - I guess that would depend on where your testers are. If your testers are all in your country, just file a trademark there. If not, then you are right - it would probably be overkill to file worldwide.
Eric Petroelje
2009-03-11 14:34:06
+5
A:
You could try releasing the beta under a code name then use the real name you planned once you are ready to release it to the general public.
Alexander
2009-03-11 13:17:38
+1 - I like this answer too, unless it's impractical because of logo images or the product name being embedded in text all over the place in your app.
Eric Petroelje
2009-03-11 13:21:24
I could do so, But I would have liked to do some marketing before hand.
Steilpass
2009-03-11 13:53:14
I liked the idea and voted it up. But frankly I'm not sure how practical it is given all that the developer might have to change.Basically I'd say, give ad-hoc to people you trust!
Kendall Helmstetter Gelner
2009-03-11 23:15:16
+2
A:
What do you mean, protect?
You could give them a binary with a different name.
Or you could simply record who you give it to, and make them agree not to steal it.
I doubt you have much to worry about. Names aren't that valuable and they would need to beat you to the app store in any case. Since you're already testing, you're probably way ahead of any would-be name-theives.
Genericrich
2009-03-11 13:19:23
A:
If you can't trust the testers, how good will their test reports be? Anyway, give them an NDA before giving them the app.
Graham Lee
2009-03-11 14:14:39
A:
Two more things to consider:
- You actually have a lot of characters for your app name. E.g. Groceries
from Sophia (http://www.sophiestication.com/groceries/) is actually called "Groceries
Grocery shopping today" And maybe you actually want to use a descriptive title. - You can submit an app without uploading it. This was supposedly for big applications.
Steilpass
2009-05-06 08:19:37