I don&#x27;t think trade mark ownership is in itself the problem. Trade marks serve a useful economic purpose in helping consumers to easily distinguish between products in the marketplace. I have no issue with companies using trade marks for this purpose as without them consumer confusion would be rife, and there&#x27;s a legitimate interest in allowing companies to police use of their brand names.<p>The problem arises when a company looks to abuse its trade mark rights and prevent usage of other brand names which to most reasonable people would never actually be confused with the trade mark owner&#x27;s brand.<p>I always want to be in the underdog&#x27;s corner, but I have sympathy with Instagram here I must admit. The origin of &#x27;gram&#x27; is irrelevant. The fact is that we are dealing with two apps with very similar functionality, who both share the word &#x27;gram&#x27;.<p>On that basis, I think there is a high likelihood of confusion in relation to the origin of the app. There&#x27;s a decent chance that a certain proportion of the relevant population could think that Littergram is an official offshoot of Instagram.<p>It&#x27;s also likely that the name was also chosen to free-ride off Instagram&#x27;s goodwill to attract attention to the app.<p>To be fair though, he has got good publicity for the app as a result of the cease and desist, which if he hadn&#x27;t named it Littergram he would never have got. I doubt Instagram would pursue a damages claim and so both parties can presumably walk away if he changes the name.