[HN Gopher] Uber shuts down app that told drivers if Uber underp...
___________________________________________________________________
Uber shuts down app that told drivers if Uber underpaid them
Author : donsupreme
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-02-18 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| jedberg wrote:
| There's a good chance that this was just a lawyer at Uber filing
| takedowns for any app with the name Uber in it related to
| ridesharing, regardless of what the app does.
| marcod wrote:
| They should just relaunch it as UberCheats!
| naebother wrote:
| I'm surprised there aren't more independent apps geared towards
| maximizing earning for drivers. Like it can't be that hard to
| create an artificial surge price if there's enough coordination
| between most regular drivers at popular spots (e.g. airports).
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I'm surprised there aren't more independent apps geared
| towards maximizing earning for drivers. Like it can't be that
| hard to create an artificial surge price if there's enough
| coordination between most regular drivers at popular spots
| (e.g. airports).
|
| Wouldn't an app be relatively easy for Uber to monitor and
| subvert?
|
| Drivers are already sometimes coordinating to create surge
| pricing, and they don't need an app to do it:
| https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/uber-lyft-drivers-
| artificia...:
|
| > While a reporter looked on, a group of about 50 drivers for
| both Lyft and Uber sat at their waiting area at Reagan National
| waiting while two drivers watched online to see when planes
| were about to land. After a plane lands, a lot of passengers
| request rideshare rides, which pushes demand up to begin with.
| But the drivers further tipped the imbalance between demand and
| supply by simultaneously turning off their apps five minutes
| before landing. Then two drivers stood at opposite ends of the
| waiting area, looking at the Uber and Lyft pricing for fares
| from the airport. They kept checking fares and watching the
| surge price increase until the fares were $13 higher than
| normal. At that point, they told the other drivers to turn
| their apps back on so they could begin accepting rides. The
| whole operation took less than two minutes, but now arriving
| passengers would pay around $13 more to reach their
| destinations.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I'm fairly certain this happened to me a couple of weeks ago
| at LAX. Everyone in the waiting area kept on having a low
| fare pop up, accept it, and then have uber try to substitute
| it for a much higher fare before ultimately saying there were
| no drivers available.
| haltingproblem wrote:
| I had never heard of UberCheats until now. Remember the Uber app
| actually routes the driver from pickup to pickup so they know
| exactly how much they have traveled. Seriously, Uber, "as the
| crow flies" instead of the actual distance traveled?
|
| This will I fear, quite happily, will unleash the Streisand
| effect on UberCheats.
|
| Uber bans UberCheats and founder savvily decides to fight it
| instead of relaunching under a new name. I predict he will end up
| with a seed round. Uber will end up with more reputation as being
| UberDark - as in we pick the dark pattern every time we can
| because why not.
| xtracto wrote:
| Isn't Uber a German word meaning "over". Can you trademark a
| valid word?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Can you trademark a valid word?
|
| Yes, absolutely. You can trademark almost anything (including
| logo colors or patterns), but the protections offered by
| trademark law are relatively narrow (or supposed to be).
|
| For example, for a long time there were two major companies
| named Apple: the computer company making the Macinthosh, and
| the recording studio founded by the Beatles. Since they were
| operating in completely different markets (computers vs music
| distribution) they both were able to keep their respective
| trademarks; but either could have easily blocked a new company
| called Apple in their own market.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The irony is that when apple moved into music they won the
| court case that they could not because of apple studios, they
| also got away with making the iphone, while their existed the
| cisco (?) iphone.
|
| On the other hand apple goes after any little shop with a
| logo that looks remotely like a stylized fruit. I guess it's
| more about how big you are, not how right.
| alex_young wrote:
| Didn't they pay the owner off for all of these
| infringements? I seem to remember that being the case...
| [deleted]
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| There's precedents everywhere for this, as long as the wording
| meets the actual requirements listed in trademark law.
|
| In the past, unscrupulous people would prey on unintentional
| confusion by naming their upstart businesses similar to
| established competitors, for example. There was also rampant
| counterfeiting. You can still see this today in jurisdictions
| without strong trademark laws.
|
| This is what trademark law originally aimed to protect us
| consumers from. Personally, I am happy with doing my own due
| diligence (let the buyer beware) rather than enacting
| regulatory laws subject to abuse by heavy-hitters, like in this
| example. This, of course, is my own personal opinion.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I have no problem with trademark law being used against
| companies trying to pretend to be the big guy.
|
| But who would think "UberCheats" is something by "Uber"?? I
| see no possible confusion and that's the whole point of
| trademark law.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| Yes, but how do you draw the line in a way that prevents
| one bad actor to claim they are in your latter safe bucket
| of soft-infringement?
|
| Without any stringent way of codifying it, there will only
| be inconsistent enforcement, and there will be people who
| manage to slip through the cracks.
|
| Uber has an UberEats already, maybe someone could think
| UberCheats are cheat codes or deals for UberEats? There is
| definitely room for confusion...
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| The problem is that something like "are people confused"
| isn't something that can be codified in the law. Try to
| codify an algorithm and people will game it. As such, the
| only solution is a judge.
| phaer wrote:
| "uber" is, but "u" and "u" are two different letters (with
| different pronunciation) in German.
|
| (don't know about trademark law, but do speak German)
| tyfon wrote:
| I think in many English speaking countries there is little
| understanding that these are actually distinct characters in
| other countries.
|
| It also seems popular to use the Danish/Norwegian o instead
| of o, one example is an energy drink called monster.
|
| I think they meant to write monster but tried to be cool,
| however monster is a real word in Norwegian that translates
| to the English "pattern". Monster in Norwegian is the same as
| monster in English.
|
| For reference, o sounds like the i in the English word bird
| or e in herd or herbs.
| esrauch wrote:
| I actually found it fascinating that in German speaking
| countries they actually pronounce it as "u" not a "u" (more
| like "you-ber"), when as an American it seems clear to me
| that it's intended to be Uber and just didn't write the
| umlaut.
| jonp888 wrote:
| German has fixed pronunciation rules, there is no
| through/trough/tough/thought confusion.
|
| Of course for some foreign words you have to make an
| exception. However, Uber has a pretty minimal presence in
| Germany, so I doubt many people know how it is 'supposed'
| to be pronounced.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I'd call it fixed spelling rules rather than
| pronunciation rules, since the language predates writing
| it down.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Let's agree and call it a 1 to 1 mapping.
| Fnoord wrote:
| When I learned German on high school, it was allowed to
| replace umlaut. For example, instead of uber, you could
| say ueber. Ie. effectively replacing the umlaut with its
| vanilla/plain vowel variant plus an e. You can do the
| same with ss by replacing it with two s (mind to write it
| like). Tho I'm not sure its correct German in all German-
| speaking regions I found Germans would understand me. It
| being useful as my keyboard layout wasn't qwertz or
| equiv.
| veesahni wrote:
| "Apple" is a registered trademark.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| See also: Why Skydrive got renamed to OneDrive
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/27/microsoft_skydrive_re...
| NearAP wrote:
| This is not surprising. Using 'Uber' in the name is trying to
| build off their brand which big companies will not allow. This is
| the reason why companies that allow you to build apps for their
| platform will have rules that say - you should not include the
| company name in your App.
|
| Someone posted here on Hacker News how Android sued him for his
| app for making use of the name 'droid' (i think) or something
| close to the logo (can't remember the exact details and can't
| find the post)
| amelius wrote:
| Friedrich Nietzsche just called claiming infringement of his
| Ubermensch concept.
| calciphus wrote:
| Verizon owns the "Droid" trademark and is very litigious.
| Wouldn't be surprised if they got a nastygram from Verizon
| lawyers.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Lucasfilm actually owns the "Droid" trademark and licenses it
| to Verizon.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(Star_Wars)#Trademark
| overlordalex wrote:
| This reminds of the third party Reddit app that started life as
| "Reddit is Fun", which had to be re-branded to "RiF" once
| Reddit itself started developing its own app.
|
| However apparently that was still unacceptable and it's
| currently named "rif is fun", and as much I like recursive
| acronyms it's a little ridiculous
| stefan_ wrote:
| > My guess is that they use the 'straight line' distance rather
| than the actual distance traveled.
|
| My god, don't tell me they are still doing this? The incompetence
| knows no bounds. Enough time to make their own chat app but no
| one around to dig up Dijkstra.
| giomasce wrote:
| I suppose that's not just incompetence. I mean, it happens to
| be incompetent when incompetence lets you pay your workers
| less...
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| If that sort of error lasted more than a few days I doubt any
| court would believe it's a mistake. Uber has how many
| hundreds of engineers? And they can't figure out how to do
| routes? Last time I was in an Uber the driver was forced to
| take a specific route if I remember correct (it's been years.
| I hate Uber so much)
| willis936 wrote:
| Free market for me but not for thee.
|
| Anyway, it's just a copyright takedown. Change the name and move
| on.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Trademark and copyright are not the same. This is a trademark
| issue.
|
| Also, not every name containing a trademark is a trademark
| violation; for instance, while "UberCheats" violates the
| trademark on "Uber", a name like "Watcher for Uber" would not
| be. The general "XYZ for Trademark" as a descriptive phrase
| tends to sidestep trademark issues. But on the other hand,
| renaming it "RideshareCheats" would sidestep the legal issue
| entirely and also open the door to generalizing it to cover
| other such services.
| koolba wrote:
| To prevent possible defamation lawsuits, you're even better
| off going with a positive sounding name like: _Fair Fare
| Share_
| xtracto wrote:
| But why would it? If I call it "HuevoCheats" would it violate
| some US company's trademark called "Huevo" when Huevo is a
| valid word in Spanish?
| chrismcb wrote:
| If someone has a trademark, in software, for the word
| huevo... Then possibly. Microsoft had trademarks on the
| word "word" as well as "windows" In this case though, the
| suit is winnable as i think you can prove no one is
| confused between UberEats and Uber heats. But honestly it
| isn't worth the hassle. The best solution is to change the
| name.
| unishark wrote:
| If you literally sell huevos as your business there may be
| a problem.
|
| Otherwise, as the other poster says, it's just about
| avoiding confusion. There can be Bob's Hardware and Bob's
| Grocery store as separate trademarks.
| Jaxkr wrote:
| Whether or not a word appears in a dictionary has no
| bearing on its enforceability as a trademark.
|
| Ultimately it's up to the courts to decide. If your app
| could reasonably be confused for an official product of
| "Huevo" corp, it would constitute trademark infringement.
| Retric wrote:
| It's very unlikely for anyone in the marketplace to
| believe "UberCheats" is made by Uber or cause confusion
| in the marketplace. As such they are unlikely to win a
| court case, a Google internal process on the other hand
| is another story.
| stefan_ wrote:
| No one has established any trademark violation. All we have
| are a bunch of angry emails and Google doing judge, jury and
| executioner in response.
| random5634 wrote:
| How did Google prevent UberCheats from litigating this
| issue? If UberCheats don't think they infringe the UberEats
| or other trademarks, they can litigate the issue normally.
| In this case Google served as the judge how?
|
| This looks like a pretty clear trademark violation!
|
| Rideshare Cheat Monitor for Uber would be MUCH safer than
| resuing an extremely similar sounding name. Or just
| RiderCheat Monitor.
|
| Given they don't think their name is similar to UberEats /
| Uber, it makes me wonder whether they are scam of some sort
| as well.
| Klwohu wrote:
| It's a risk any user of the major platforms takes when they
| participate in a walled garden ecosystem.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Try doing this as a small developer defending his/her product
| against scammers on the marketplace.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-18 23:01 UTC)