[christiangenco]

My first thought when I read the Facebook Paper announcement was along these lines.

This is a big social faux paus on Facebook's part - at least among the developer community - but I really don't see either company changing their Paper's name. I imagine it'll go similarly to Google's Go name collision[1].

How should the little guy in these situations be legally protected? On one hand it's clear that "candy" shouldn't be trademarked, but "paper" is just as generic a term. Maybe the lesson here is not to name your product generic nouns and avoid the trouble all together.

1. https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=9

[rz2k]

That's what I thought of, since two programming languages are even more alike.

Did it not turn out to be a legal issue because there was ultimately little commercial interest behind the Go![1] language?

Apple Computer had to pay Apple Corps, even though it seemed like the computer industry had little to do with the music industry at the time[2], so it is confusing how the conflict can be ignored until it goes away.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go!_%28programming_language%29

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v._Apple_Computer