Uber Shuts Down App That Told Drivers If Uber Underpaid Them:
The creator of the Chrome extension 'UberCheats' Armin Samii said Uber claimed it violated its trademark. "Uber filed a false trademark claim against UberCheats, so it's been taken off the Chrome app store," he said on Twitter. "They claim that people might confuse it for an actual Uber product."
UberCheats was a Chrome extension that helped drivers figure out if they'd been underpaid by for Uber.
[...] Samii's app helped keep Uber accountable, kept drivers informed, and was incredibly simple. "Sometimes Uber calculates the distance from point A to point B incorrectly," he told Motherboard in an email. "My guess is that they use the 'straight line' distance rather than the actual distance traveled. In my area, that has led to a '6 minute trip' taking 50 minutes, since they thought I could...fly, I guess? Technically, the app is quite simple. It looks at the start/end destination of the trip, plugs it into google maps, and checks to see if the distance you were paid for matches the distance Google says."
[...] Samii launched his Chrome extension in August 2020 and hadn't had any problems keeping it online until now.
[...] In the email Samii showed Motherboard, Google forwarded the original complaint it received from Uber. "The application uses, without authorization, the mark Uber, a trademark owned and controlled by Uber Technologies, Inc. Any use by the application of the Infringing Marks constitutes a trademark infringement under Section 32 of the Lanham Act," it said.
[...] UberCheats could relaunch with a new name and continue just fine, but Samii said he won't do that. "I plan to fight this," he said. "I will not be bullied by corporate lawyers trying to scare the little guy. I am in the right, and they know it. I have appealed it with both Google and Uber."
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Friday February 19 2021, @09:39AM (26 children)
Is this like McDonalds, which for a long time sued anyone who named their business McAnything? They seem to have given up.
So Uber thinks that they own the word "Uber", even though it's just German. UberCheats could as well be an academic site helping students cheat. Uber's trademark claim is pretty obviously überrissen...
N.B. for the pedants out there: The U in Uber should really have an umlaut on it, but this is sometimes omitted for capital letters. I always figured that Uber omitted it more out of ignorance, but then, I'm a cynic.
Anyway, how do English speakers pronounce Uber? Is it "oo-ber" with the "o" sound like the word "who"? Or is it more "oo-ber" with the "o" sound like the word "ewww"? Or something else entirely?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday February 19 2021, @11:35AM (16 children)
For the pedants out there, the German word has the umlaut, but as soon as we adopt it into our language, we are in no way obligated to write it how the Germans render it, German-approved transliteration rules notwithstanding. It is the adopter of a foreign term that decides how the word is rendered in their own language, not the doner - because it's their bloody language. Germans who think they can force others to use "ue" transliterations should learn some of their languages history first, and fix their own language if they think the 'e' is so damn important. (Clue - you know them dots - they didn't use to be dots...)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday February 19 2021, @01:44PM (12 children)
Unavoidably, over time. But still...
Having once lived near Versailles, Ohio: even as someone who doesn't speak French, hearing it pronounced likes sails on a ship hurts. Just as much as hearing British people refer to "Ja-la-peenos", because they haven't a clue about Spanish pronunciation. For those who do know how to pronounce the Spanish word, it sounds...uneducated.
"Uber" pronounced as "Yuber"? That may be even worse than Versailles - where the heck does that "Y" sound come from? Helium balloons don't "yunavoidably" move "Yup".
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 19 2021, @02:17PM (1 child)
I'd say it comes from the same place as the "eye" sound in iPhone - "eye"nsects don't "eye"nfest dirty homes.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 19 2021, @02:24PM
Wait - I think I've got it: vowel-consanant-vowel = the first vowel is long: ape versus apple. Lots of English words don't obey that pattern, mostly words adopted from other languages, but they tend to be learned as exceptions to the rule. Perfectly reasonable to apply the rule when you don't know any better.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 19 2021, @02:19PM (6 children)
How do you pronounce “user”? Or “united”? ”Tube”? “Cube”? “Dune”?
And of course Helium balloons don't move “upe”, but up.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 19 2021, @02:28PM (5 children)
"Tyube"? "Dyune"? Bad examples, those both take the "oo" sound.
But yeah - vowel-consonant-vowel usually means a long sound in the first vowel - with *lots* of exceptions because English is a trade tongue that has absorbed many words from other languages.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 19 2021, @03:44PM (4 children)
In the USA sure. But not everywhere. The Brits do pronounce the words as tyune, dyune etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @03:31AM (3 children)
“ In the USA sure. But not everywhere. The Brits do pronounce the words as tyune, dyune etc.”
That’s due to Brits having bad teeth. Too much inbreeding on a tiny island with population micro segmented by class hierarchy. They also pronounce “film” as “fil-um” and schedule as “shed-joo-wall” and think it’s posh instead of semiliterate. At least they don’t similarly fuck up “school.”
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:18AM
Lol!
There's a reason that it is called 'English' - you people speak American. You cannot even spell socks, axe and other similar words. Nor have you mastered phrases such as 'going to' and so you have adopted the much easier 'gonna'. I'm surprised that you even mentioned the word 'film' - did you forget that you call them movies? Due to the poor education system under which you appear to be suffering they are increasingly diverging languages.
(chuckles)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:57AM
You can think Mr. Webster for many of those. He created his dictionary in order to create an American English by fiat. A large number of phonetic and lexicographic changes got their start from him and like-minded individuals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @03:35AM
In other words - they pronounce those words correctly.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 19 2021, @02:46PM
In English, the connection between spelling and pronunciation is a real mess, as every grade school student of English soon realizes when learning their letters, so to speak. Now that we have UTF-8, maybe the next such project should be unifying spelling and pronunciation. English has almost no marks. Even words that should be marked often aren't. ("naive" should really be "naïve") Anyway, it's "oo", as in goober, not "ew".
Maybe they could name their app McUber.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday February 19 2021, @04:36PM
Pittsburgh has a North and South Versailles that is pronounced the same way, but manage to pronounce Duquesne and La Fayette correctly.
It would be funny if the Versailles in North Versailles and South Versailles was pronounced differently, but sadly it is not.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday February 20 2021, @11:19PM
Regarding Versailles - agree! Beatrice and Norfolk in NE are examples my g/f mentions in the same context. Imagine be-aaah-triss, with pain on the middle (so no, not not the opiod-induced "aaaah" of the painkilling injection, the "aaaah" of the original pain) syllable, and nor-fork (mostly non-rhotic complete with a folk, or fork, etymology!).
I guess I'm "ha-le-penyos" pronouncer (almost pure schwa on the 2nd syllable, but "le" isn't a bad approximation).
My big boob on a related word is gliding off the "n" in my vocalisation "habanyero".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @02:34PM
“Deutschland über alles, über alles ” - - the post-we1 German national (nazi) anthem. So why is it surprising that Uber acts like nazis?
Boycott Uber, Lyft, etc. Problem solved.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 19 2021, @03:04PM (1 child)
Lesson of the day: if you're going to make an app that is going to piss off a major branded company - don't outright embed their name: UberCheats, CheckUber, I-Uber-Know, all begging to be smacked down. DriveDistance for proper payment validation, IsMyCompanyScrewingMe rides for hire tool, ProperPaymentCalc should be unassailable - you're just going to have to flog them in promotions to get Uber (and Lyft and other) drivers to find and use them instead of taking the lazy option of having the app store search function match based on the name.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @04:37PM
A good example of trademark abuse was Toyota suing a company that sold Lexus Peas.
The court held that the Lexus trademark for automobiles did not extend to unrelated products such as peas, there was no possibility of confusion in the average consumers mind, and besides, the term Lexus wasn’t created by Toyota but borrowed from another language, same as Uber.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Friday February 19 2021, @11:55AM (3 children)
Also, do you mean 'English speakers' from America or England? I pronounce it as if there is a 'B' in front.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 19 2021, @03:12PM
BooberCheats would attract an entirely different user base.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @07:57PM (1 child)
Let them change the name to UCheat then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 20 2021, @03:34AM
Change it to Unter. The opposite of Uber.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 19 2021, @01:04PM (1 child)
No, I don't sprechen sie Deutsch, but I read Nietzsche while I was still in high school. A teacher corrected me when I pronounced it as yubermench. About half of Americans pronounce is as yuber, I think, because it's the most natural American-English way to say it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @09:23PM
Amazing! Runaway reads? And, he was in high school? And a teacher corrected him? But, he is thinking, again.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday February 19 2021, @02:33PM
Any worse than "Windows"? Granted, that's a lawsuit Microsoft has studiously avoided bringing since they'd almost certainly lose. Though they haven't been afraid of threatening to bankrupt companies with the trial costs to gt them to change the name.
Still, I think this is a legitimate instance of trademark infringement, regardless of how shaky the trademark is. The app was specifically referencing the Uber car hailing in its name. If "Uber" were named "CarGo" instead, the app would almost certainly have been named "CarGoCheats"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 19 2021, @02:59PM (1 child)
The dude that made McDonalds what it is paid a huge sum of money (yet, less than he verbally promised he would) basically to get the McDonald name. Names matter, a lot. After they have built a hundred billion dollar company around the brand, they matter even more.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @07:16PM
Some people have the common sense to tell BigOrp to go fuck itself for trademark overreach knowing that BigCorp relies on intimidation and ignorance and will drop it before getting to court and having to pay damages. Same as Microsoft Windows vs Lindows, where Microsoft paid $20 million for permission to drop their own lawsuit.
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday February 19 2021, @10:23AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @02:52PM
Better to just turn it into software as a service on a server in Germany. The Germans will laugh at Uber owning all uses of the term.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DrkShadow on Friday February 19 2021, @03:25PM
Guess they'll have to rename it to "UberSucks" or maybe "UberSuck". It seems like it's well established that it's not trademark infringement to make a "-sucks" name. (Anyone remember paypalsucks.com? They apparently didn't pay their web host.)
It would be an appear, but he could get it put back into the store (probably.. never know with Google.) They'd then sue him, and so it would be a personal burden to keep it going.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @03:29PM (4 children)
’ The pics document Uber cheating. Get enough driver doing it and sue - it’s the American Way!! And probably the only way the untermenschs can beat their Ubermensch overlord.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Friday February 19 2021, @04:18PM (1 child)
Because then all the driver has to do is drive in circles a few times to rachet up the distance and get paid for. Or futz with your Odo if you don't want to drive.
Using a nav service is a nominally neutral 3rd party that can give you a verifiable estimate as to the distance it should have taken to drive. You can then use that information to back up your claim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @04:28PM
(Score: 5, Touché) by meustrus on Friday February 19 2021, @05:07PM (1 child)
No, they have a job to do, and would rather just have that information pre-calculated for them and available.
What you're saying is like saying that you don't need a speedometer, just a high-precision odometer and a stopwatch. I mean, if you want to know how fast you're going, you it's just a couple of subtractions and a division. Easy peasy. You'd be an idiot for not being able to do it.
Most browser plug-ins do something you could do yourself, but more conveniently. Not sure why you give this one crap for it. I used to have a JSON formatter extension before that sort of thing started being malware vectors, not because I can't manually parse the brackets myself, but because it's so much faster to find stuff when the hierarchy is visible.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @07:27PM
You should be keeping a log book anyway for tax purposes. Helps justify the proportion of personal vs business use and deductions.
And which is easier - jotting down a couple of entries in a log book or opening up a web browser and inputting the values? The first gives a permanent record, the second … well, you’re out of luck now anyway.
Pen and paper make a permanent record and doesn’t require you to fart around with a web browser. It also leave place to write any contemporaneous notes, like the rider puking in the back seat or being sexually harassing.
Smartphones haven’t obsoleted paper records, or even post-it’s, for a reason.