A block-by-block monitoring app previously generally known as WalkNYC is now known as Sidewalk, after the town alleged trademark infringement and demanded a reputation change.
The app, which tracks strolling routes round New York Metropolis, modified its identify Thursday. The change comes after the town’s Division of Transportation in July despatched a cease-and-desist letter to the app developer, saying the identify infringed on the company’s trademarked wayfinding program, WalkNYC, as The Metropolis Reporter beforehand detailed.
DOT’s WalkNYC helps pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders navigate the town with maps and instructions in high-traffic public locations, together with subway stations and close to Citi Bike docks.
Nick Paolucci, a spokesperson for the town Legislation Division, mentioned the identify change is a part of an settlement within the works between the town and app developer.
“We have now a settlement in precept and we count on a closing decision within the coming days,” he mentioned.
The app developer, Joe Puccio, declined to touch upon the settlement earlier than it was finalized, however mentioned in a press release that the identify Sidewalk “was a really pure selection” that mirrored how the easiest way to discover the town is on foot.
A DOT spokesperson referred to an company assertion from August that indicated appreciation for New Yorkers’ enthusiasm for strolling and famous the division wished to keep away from mix-ups with the wayfinding program. Puccio’s app used colours and an icon of a strolling individual that had been just like the branding of the town’s program.
‘Potential Confusion Is Much less Doubtless’
Within the cease-and-desist letter, the DOT identified the app “induced confusion to locals and guests and intimates that the Metropolis of New York is affiliated.” The company advised the app to cease utilizing WalkNYC branding, disable the web site and app and take away bodily and on-line supplies selling it.
Regardless of the identify change, Puccio seems to have maintained the app’s visible identification, together with the identical strolling particular person icon.
However that identify change might be adequate to adjust to the principle demand of the cease-and-desist, in response to Tracy Jong, senior legal professional on the regulation agency Evans Fox LLP who works on mental property.
“It adjustments the general business impression such that potential confusion is much less probably,” Jong wrote in an e mail.
Lawyer Stacy Grossman, founding father of the mental property agency SGIP, agreed.
“The Metropolis doesn’t personal trademark registrations for SIDEWALK, and several other third events already use comparable walking-person icons for strolling apps,” she mentioned over e mail. “So long as the app doesn’t in any other case counsel an affiliation with the Metropolis, I believe the identify change ought to resolve the priority.”
‘A Love Letter’ to NYC
The app has garnered devoted customers who take pleasure in monitoring their pavement-pounding progress. After he bought the cease-and-desist letter, Puccio added a immediate to the app for customers to submit a kind telling the DOT why they used the instrument. He mentioned he acquired responses from greater than 1,000 individuals.
His app first turned out there on Apple’s App Retailer in Might. It logs every metropolis block that customers stroll by marking routes on a digital map. A leaderboard exhibits how customers examine to 1 one other, and the app consists of statistics about mileage and time spent strolling. Puccio mentioned he plans to quickly add the flexibility to trace museums and parks visited, amongst different locations.
He advised The Metropolis Reporter he made the app as “a love letter” to New York Metropolis and it has helped him “discover components of the town I’d by no means been to.” He has walked simply over 1 / 4 of Manhattan’s blocks thus far, he added.
