KindleLendingClub Forced By Amazon To Rebrand; Now BookLending.com

Leena Rao

Leena Rao is currently a Senior Editor for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

In early January, Amazon rolled out a feature that allows Kindle users to lend books to another Kindle user a for 14 day period. KindleLendingClub spawned from this feature as a way to connect people for lending their e-books. The service quickly accumulated more than 12,000 people lending and borrowing on the platform. Users can post books that they want to lend in a public forum and can also request to borrow books. And you can search for borrowers and lenders by title on the platform.

Unfortunately, KindleLendingClub just received a call from Amazon, requesting that the startup change its name and domain. After all, Amazon owns the trademark for ‘Kindle’ and is within its rights to ask the startup to change its name. And Amazon has enforced this in the past.

So, KindleLendingClub is now rebranding as BookLending.com, which is unfortunately not as great of a name for its service. A word of advice to startups—check the trademark data base before picking your name and domain.

Company: Amazon
Website: amazon.com
Launch Date: 1994
IPO: NASDAQ:AMZN

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...

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