Australian developer loses battle with Twitter and rebrands application

An Australian Twitter developer based in New York has rebranded a software application despite alleged requests from the social networking giant to destroy the application’s source code and cease all sales.

Dean Collins, from consultancy firm Cognation, was contacted by a law firm representing Twitter last month which demanded he cease operation of the domain name “MyTwitterButer.com” and submit ownership of his application to Twitter on the basis of an alleged infringement of trademark rights.

The application, which is based on developer APIs provided by Twitter, allows users to “follow” other users based on keywords in posts.

While Collins initially said he would not give control of the $US10 application to Twitter, he did concede that if the social networking giant wanted the name of the application to change, “then it’s just business being business”.

However, when he offered to change the name of the application to “MyTweetButler”, the company allegedly rejected the proposal and continued to demand he hand control of the domain name over to the company.

But following initial negotiations last month regarding the application and the domain name, Collins says the company has “stopped returning my calls”.

“We had some conference calls last month in which they said I cannot call it “MyTweetButler”. I said to them that I was going to Australia between 21 August and 7 September, and that we would talk when I got back. However, I’ve left emails and calls in that time and they are literally not getting back in touch with me.”

“So today I just thought “screw it”. I’ve registered the domain name as “MyPostButler” instead. I was always comfortable changing the name, I do respect Twitter has a trademark. But the stumbling block was them wanting the domain name, and they wanted me to destroy the source code – and I’m not going to do that.”

Collins says that he will continue to try to get in touch with the company, but that he will “wait and see what happens”.

“Either they’re never going to call me again and wish me the best and hope that I go away, or I’ll get another cease and desist letter. We’ll see.”

Karen Web, who represents Twitter through law firm Fenwick, sent Collins a letter last month referring to an “infringement of Twitter’s trademark rights”.
“Twitter has recently become aware that you have registered and are using the
MyTwitterButler.com domain, where you advertise and offer for sale the “My Twitter Butler” software that facilitates aggressive and automatic following to Twitter users. On your website you also claim to have used the same aggressive following techniques. This activity violates Twitter’s TOS and rules.”

“In light of the above, we must demand that you immediately… deactivate the MyTwitterButler.com website… transfer the MyTwitterButler.com domain to Twitter… comply with Twitter’s TOS and rules, which includes stopping your aggressive and automatic following and offering techniques and software for others to aggressively or automatically follow; and… stop all use of the My Twitter Butler name, the TWITTER mark, or any other name, logo, or domain name that includes TWITTER or any confusingly similar term.”