Just last week Facebook announced its brand new Paper app which was basically a new way for Facebook users to view their News Feed. The app has since been made available for download but only to those using iPhones and are living in the US. Now if you’re wondering why you might have heard the name “Paper” before, it is because back in 2012, developers FiftyThree announced an app called Paper. The app is completely different from Facebook’s app in the sense that it is a drawing app and has nothing to do with social media (apart from the fact that you can share your drawings).
Naturally FiftyThree aren’t too happy about Facebook using the Paper name and have since published on their blog their unhappiness about sharing the same name. “There’s a simple fix here. We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story. Facebook should stop using our brand name.” According to the developers, they actually reached out to Facebook about the matter but instead of changing the name, Facebook stated that they should have let FiftyThree know about their plans earlier, which hardly sounds like an apology.
As it stands it does not look like there will be any lawsuits taking place, yet, but at the same time we doubt FiftyThree will be taking this lying down either, but hopefully there will be some kind of amicable solution. In the meantime what do you guys think? If they were to take each other to court, who would win?