[rurounijones]

Devil's advocate:

Your software is often used in conjunction with zendesk, you say it yourself and they both use "zenX" branding.

To me that could easily lead to confusion as a customer might believe they are are part of a suite of SaaS offerings under the "zen" brand (i.e. zendesk branching out).

I make no comment on the rest of the story, just that specific bit.

[Edit]: Maybe I should have said 'low-ranking imps advocate' instead :p

[bobsy]

This is what I popped in to say. He say's it himself.

> Yes, we both use the “zen” moniker as part of our names, yes both are SaaS. But we’re not targeting the same customers or solving the same problem.

> On the contrary: Both I and many of my customers use zendesk alongside zenbilling.

There is an overlap between what they do and both using 'zen' can easily be interpreted as affiliation between the 2 companies.

[nmcfarl]

I don’t know - I use zencoder and zendesk. Just because your product has a wide and diverse user base, like zendesk’s, doesn’t mean it’s easily confused with every other product who’s name is related.

I don’t assume there is an affiliation between the zencoder and zendesk. Personally I wouldn’t think there was much overlap between Billing and Customer Support, either - and I would not be confused in the least. (From the names - branding could clearly connect the 2)

Plus the number of startups with Zen in their name is huge: http://www.crunchbase.com/search?query=zen (which is a bad query as it excludes zen embedded in the name like we are discussing - but good as the number of relevant results is still ~30. And it’s the best I could find on short notice.)

[anu_gupta]

He pretty much gets that (I think) - this isn't a complaint against the fact that Zendesk are doing this, it's a complaint about the way they've gone about it.

[return0]

That's not very devilish, there is clear room for confusion here, the OP should seek another name.

anecdotally, I don't use either, but i 've heard of zendesk, and would naturally associate zenbilling with them.

[yashg]

Now, zendesk doesn't own the word zen do they? Does this mean anyone in the world now can not use the word zen anywhere in the name if they are in the SaaS business?

I believe they also had a problem with a company named FreshDesk which was a direct competitor.

http://www.ripoffornot.org/

I just see a company being bully here.

[return0]

Obviously they don't there is potential for confusion it would be settled in court (unlike, for example, zenRobotics)

[nakedrobot2]

So every Twitter client that uses "twit" "tweet" etc. in their name, is owned by Twitter? I don't think so.

[kenkam]

This analogy breaks down because Twitter (when they started out) wanted everyone to use their API, they want people to associate their app with their platform (e.g. TweetDeck and TweetBot)

ZenDesk on the other hand cannot be said to do the same.