How my app was banned from google for trademark

How my app was banned from google for trademark

Probably many of you at least heard of this common thing - but as recently another one colleague complained of the same google’s behavior, I decided to post my short story so that more people could be aware of this unpleasant trouble.

One and half year ago I decided to learn a bit of Android development. I had the idea of some primitive game and after some efforts wrote a clumsy implementation. Then I pushed it to Google Play. Though quite poor in design (as you may see here), it enjoyed some user’s activity and get about 1000 installs in a month. Meanwhile I was trying to improve my skills and write something more… and then…

I got a letter from Google, it started with:

This is a notification that your application, Wordys - word tetris, with package ID none.rg.wordys, has been removed from the Google Play Store.

REASON FOR REMOVAL: Alleged trademark infringement.

What happened? Letter was not quite clear, but researching a bit I’ve found that Tetris is a trademark and some special company Blue Planet Software complained to Google about my using it in the title of the game.

I admit this was my fault, but I have no idea that Tetris is a trademark since many games also use this title (and I’ve seen in the google’s letter many also were removed).

The only choice Google proposed was to “fix the problem” and upload application as a new one.

What is bad in the Google’s behavior, I think:

• they do not send warning to you, suggesting changing the title for example - just delete your application (with losing stats, votes, links etc)!
• they provide no way to send appeal or something like this - they only offer to contact Blue Planet Software itself.
• they plainly say it is alleged infringement - i.e. they do not care to check or contact you.

My colleague got into similar situation - but instead the word “Tetris” in the title he have functionality of tetris in the part of the game and mentioned it in description. Since it was more than year later, the letter he received was slightly different in format, but also quite unclear (so he have no idea about the nature of violation) - and also mentioned Blue Planet Software.

So be on watch and learn from our mistakes. Good luck and happy coding! :)