Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Stealing Someone’s Design: HipChat vs Messages

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Friday, February 17th, 2012
wtf

Clearly there needs to be a workshop or CBT or something on trademark in Cupertino because Apple simply cannot stop infringing! As you see here, the handsome icon for the Messages app looks a lot like a reversed version of the icon for HipChat’s group chat service. HipChat CEO Pete Curley took it in stride, assuming that they would be the ones who would have to change their logo in order to appease the great Moloch of West Coast.

“I doubt we’re on Apple’s radar, but it sucks that we’ll probably have to change our icon because of this,” he said.

Knowing that I had a scoop on my hands, I pressed him for more information.

“What are you guys going to do?” I asked.

“I was thinking of releasing a new version of our app with this as the icon.”

Chin up, Pete. We’ll keep using you until they sue you into oblivion.

Tags: ,