When
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said recently that he was "wary" of developers who used the company's name in their applications, it looked like the company was contemplating a legal crackdown.
Now, Twitter appears to be following through. On Tuesday, a lawyer for the company complained to developer Dean Collins that he was violating Twitter's trademark by selling the downloadable
application My Twitter Butler. "Twitter is concerned," the letter states, "that your use of My Twitter Butler and the related domain may cause confusion in the marketplace by suggesting that you and
your site are somehow affiliated with Twitter."
Twitter demanded that Collins stop using the company name in his app. The microblogging service also told Collins to deactivate the site
MyTwitterButler.com and transfer that domain to the company.
In addition, Twitter threatened to suspend Collins' account and take "such steps as it deems necessary to protect its intellectual
property rights," unless he complies with the demands by Aug. 24.
Collins has been selling the My Twitter Butler for $10 since April. The Windows application allows users to automatically follow
other Twitterers based on keywords in their posts. The program also allows users to send direct messages to all of their followers at once. Collins, who also runs the site LiveBaseballChat.com, says
he created the application so that he could more easily find Twitter users who were posting about baseball.
Collins is just one of many developers to incorporate the word Twitter in an
application. This week appears to mark the first time the company's lawyers have demanded that a developer stop using its name, but Twitter's Stone expressed concerns about the practice in a July 1 blog post.
"Twitter is the name of our service and our company," he wrote. "When folks ask us about naming their
application with 'Twitter,' we generally respond by suggesting more original branding for their project. This avoids potential confusion down the line."
Stone said in that same post that the
company had also applied to trademark "tweet," but wasn't planning to target applications and services that use the word Tweet in their names.
Twitter's lawyers also alleged that Collins' app
violates the company's terms of service and rules by "offering techniques and software for others to aggressively or automatically follow."