go – VOTE! Down further on the list is “Cui” pronounced “Qwee” or “Koo-Y”. Someone has suggested CuiCui, which is French for “chirp”. Do you really want to say that you use “Koo-y Koo-y” as your twitter client? Besides, Cui would therefore be a quicker, shorter chirp, right?

That’s ridiculous. I’m tired of all these companies thinking they own everything under the sun.

This shouldn’t be surprising I guess?

Facebook thinks they own the term “book.”

Crapple believes they own the letter “i”

These companies are getting friggen insane and the US government is allowing it. Copywriting is becoming as silly as US Patent law.

heres my tweet for the day “twitter sucks.”

I could see the argument for it being a homonym…but a misspelling? Maybe in France :) But I can understand Twitter wanting them to change, as talking about the two verbally would get confusing. But I would doubt they have much of a legal case. Maybe Touiteur is changing as a professional courtesy?

I suppose it depends on how they were asked – if it was polite and respectful and they explained their reasoning to LevelUp then fair enough and fair play to LevelUp for agreeing to.

But if they threatened them in any way it’s wrong, cause at the end of the day they shouldn’t have the right to force LevelUp to change it – it is a completely different word after all.

But like Jeff said, if it’s just professional courtesy after a polite request then fair enough.

In fairness to Twitter, if you don’t defend a trademark then you can lose it.

We may think ‘Tuiteur’ is silly to go after, and to some extent it is. But it also /is/ a term being used in the same field — microblogging — as Twitter itself, albeit as a client for Twitter. I can see Coke going after a soft drink named ‘Kohka Kolah’ fairly readily, even though the spelling is pretty different.

(Heck, I can see the Apache webserver folks making a polite request that someone making a web-browser named A-patchy Browser change the browser name to avoid confusion, even if A-patchy was used to connect to Apache servers.)

LevelUp doesn’t seem upset or angry, so I’m going to assume Twitter asked them in a reasonably polite manner.

Aww that sucks I always though Touiteur’s name was pretty unique and original making it stand out. Hopefully the next name is just as original and doesn’t use the words tweet or twit as we have enough apps with those names.

@16: such knowledge us commoners use is more commonly known as common sense.

If you speak French, “Touiteur” is pronounced exactly the same as “Twitter” (with an authentic French accent). Get it? French people don’t pronounce all English words the same as Americans.

Or TvviTTer

Touiteur is pronounced exactly the same as Twitter. It’s a good play on words, but it’s not a copyright-safe choice for them. Twitter is not at fault for calling them out on this. And because of the nature of copyright, if twitter doesn’t protect their trademark, they will lose their trademark. They really have no choice, so all you angry ranters should really calm the heck down and learn about these matters.

I say LevelUP KEEPS the name what it is and tells Twitter to suck it’s theoretical left nut. I have not gone to law school nor have I passed any bar or anything like it, but I will tell you right now this has NO CHANCE in front of any judge. The company wouldn’t even need a lawyer to represent them..they could LITERALLY show up to court at no cost to them and go “The simple fact that Twitter thinks this is infringement of any kind makes a mockery of this courtroom and is wasting time when you could be spending your time ruling over say, an Apple case.”

twittah!