iPad app maker FiftyThree to trademark Paper, brings fight to Facebook

While it is making all the right noises, Facebook’s news aggregator app, **Paper** , seems to be having a spot of bother with its name. When Facebook decided to release the app on iOS first, it perhaps forgot to consider the fact that there already existed a rather widely-loved app called Paper for iPad in the App Store.   As things now stand, an irate FiftyThree has filed to trademark “Paper”. TechCrunch sported the filing in the US Patent and Trademark Office. The trademark was filed on January 30, the very day Facebook revealed that it was to release an app called Paper. FiftyThree had earlier trademarked “Paper by FiftyThree” but not “Paper”, thanks to which Facebook saw a chance and leaped at it.   In an open letter to Facebook, FiftyThree’s Co-Founder and CEO, Georg Petschnigg, wrote about going up against Facebook , as far as the fight for the name “Paper” goes. He explained the origins of the company and how it built Paper, a sketching app, to be Apple’s iPad App of the Year for 2012. The application boasts of 100 million users worldwide too.   Petschnigg explained how Facebook launching its own app named Paper had caused confusion amongst its existing user base. “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,” he wrote.   Facebook has reportedly perished the thought of changing the name or making modifications to it and has released **Paper for iOS** on the eve of its 10th birthday. Whether this tussle will have an amicable settlement is yet to be seen, even though it’s quite possible that a big company like Facebook could end up having the upper hand against FiftyThree.