No one should fault a company for protecting its trademark whether in the real world or on the App Store, but the University of Texas has taken things too far, trying to get their former students to pull the useful iTexas app from iTunes because the University claims that it infringes on their trademark on Texas.
iTexas is a free app released by Mutual Mobile that allows students to access their class schedule, search the UT directory, check out their grades, look at the day’s cafeteria menus and more. It sounds like a must-have app for iPhone-toting UT students, and while Mutual Mobile has had complaints from the university before — namely, when the app was called “UT Directory” and used the school colors in the design scheme — they were quick to rename the application and address the concerns.
You’d think that would end the problem, but now the University of Texas is claiming that because iTexas uses the word “Texas” in the App Name, it is too “confusingly similar to [UT’s] Texas [trademark].”
Look, this is just totally absurd in every detail: from the way the University of Texas is gunning for a company for releasing a totally free app with obvious utility to the majority of their students, to the fact that UT got a trademark on a State name in the first place.
Perhaps Techdirt said it best: “Lesson learned. Don’t try to make life better for UT students without first paying the University.”
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
