Potential trademark violation

[barthalion]

Hi @mimbrero,

This wasn't caught during the initial review and I apologize for that. I'm afraid "WhatsApp Desktop" constitutes a trademark violation, even with various "unofficial" disclaimers.

This has been brought up due to similar app getting ownership verification on beta.flathub.org. While we're still discussing how to redesign the verification badge on the website to avoid issues like this, I think your app should be renamed to make it clear it's not related to WhatsApp itself. An example of that would be https://beta.flathub.org/apps/com.gigitux.youp which just says "Youp for whatsapp", making it clear it's a WhatsApp client unrelated to the service itself.

The application ID can stay the same; it's purely about the name.

[mimbrero]

Thank you for reaching out.

Would "Linux client for WhatsApp" or anything similar be valid? My app doesn't have any custom name like Youp, it's just whatsapp-desktop-linux.

[razzeee]

I think this also needs an icon change, as that also is trademarked.

I think you might want an identity for your app, which "Linux client for WhatsApp" doesn't give you

[bbhtt]

@mimbrero Hello we are tracking a bunch of applications with trademark violations flathub/flathub#5228. So let's revive this as the issue is still there and problematic.

Please try to use your own icon and name for the application to avoid trademark issues and confusing people. I think 2 months is a reasonable time period for us to wait for the icon and name to be changed.

You can find some resources for icon guidelines in https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/metainfo-guidelines/quality-guidelines#app-icon and name in https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/metainfo-guidelines/quality-guidelines#app-name

And the guidelines on trademarks https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/metainfo-guidelines/quality-guidelines#no-trademark-violations

[bbhtt]

@mimbrero Any update? The two months is coming to an end..

[mimbrero]

@bbhtt Sorry for the late reply, I'm very busy lately and I'm not paying attention to notifications about this app.

Do I only have to change the name and icon in the metadata file, so that what's displayed in Flathub does not violate any trademarks, or do I have to rebrand the whole application?

[bbhtt]

Yes, name and icon is enough for now.

[bbhtt]

I think 2 months is a reasonable time period for us to wait for the icon and name to be changed.

The stipulated 2 months time was over on July 29.

If this isn't solved, the app will be temporarily delisted, until this issue is fixed

[bbhtt]

Since there is no response after months of waiting, this app will be delisted. If you want to get it back, please fix the issue and open an issue on https://github.com/flathub/flathub/issues