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7 Comments

Legal problems with naming?

Hi !

I'm developing a personal project similar to https://www.spacehey.com (that imitates MySpace) but, in my case, is a "resurrection" of Fotolog.

Fotolog was a website similar to Instagram where you could post a photo, write a caption and follow people. It was very popular here in Spain and in South America in 2007-2012. In 2019 the project finally dead after many years of decadence and nowadays https://www.fotolog.com is random news portal...

The point is that I would like to name FotoBlog (not Fotolog, obviously) to my project, but I don't know if it's very similar and it could bring me some legal problems... What do you think ?

And... What should i keep in mind for be "legal"?

Thank you !

  1. 1

    Choosing the name "FotoBlog" for your project could pose legal risks if it closely resembles the previous Fotolog. Conduct a trademark search, check domain availability, and consider consulting a legal professional to ensure compliance. Develop clear terms of service, privacy policies, and user content guidelines to mitigate potential legal issues.

  2. 4

    Hi David, I can only speak from the UK perspective as that's my experience. Normally with questions like this you first check the trademark status. A quick search shows that FOTOLOG is a trademarked in the UK and the address is in Spain which suggests it's the company you're talking about:
    https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00903813003

    The existence of a trademark obviously means you can't use the name Fololog for your business. However, it also means you can't use a similar name that could seek to mislead or impersonate the original brand. Given that what you're doing is a "resurrection" of Fotolog then I'd say you'd be on pretty shaky territory from a legal perspective. The trademark does not expire until 2024 in the UK so they could potentially sue you for IP infringement. If I were you I'd call it something else!

    1. 1

      Thank you Georgia ! And thank you for the research :)

      I see... I think that it's going to be the best option. I think that it's going to lose some identity or essence but I think that it's a safety option.

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      This comment was deleted a year ago.

  3. 3

    Do you want to make money from this project? I'd say unless your site gets popular, lawyers won't care.

    1. 1

      Hi ! Thank you for your answer...

      It's not the main goal but I have a little bit hope that it goes viral xD

  4. 2

    Don't worry about it, if the entire service is dead you can't really create any damage to the people who previously owned it and drove it into the ground by using a name made from two common words (photo/foto and blog) that arent the same as the name of their now-dead service.

    1. 1

      Thank you for your answer !

      I'm scared just in case that the project goes viral or something... Because it's a bit possible (I don't know in what scale)

      I think that I'm going to think other name and that's it xD

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