HTC Sued Over "HTC ChaCha" Name

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Last week at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, Spain, HTC introduce two new Facebook phones – well, Facebook phones insomuch as they were Android phones with a dedicated button that took you right to Facebook. One of them was named the HTC ChaCha and now HTC is drawing the legal attention of website ChaCha.com, which is a question & answer site in the vein of Yahoo! Answers, if you’re familiar with that site. To ChaCha.com, it seems like a clearcut case of trademark infringement.

The website ChaCha, or more formally, the company behind it, ChaCha Search, Inc., does legally own the trademark for “ChaCha” in both the United States and Europe, according to tech site TechCrunch. ChaCha does offer a mobile version of their website, as well as apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Ergo, the case could be made (in my limited legal knowledge) that ChaCha does provide mobile products and the HTC ChaCha is infringing on those products.

ChaCha search filed against HTC in Indiana Southern District Court (ChaCha is based in Indiana) last Tuesday, which was also the day that HTC introduced the device. Obviously, companies screen for this sort of stuff before they name a product (remember that Apple wanted to call  the Apple TV “iTV” but they got flak from the British TV channel?) and it seems like somebody at HTC was alseep at the wheel on this one.

N o official release dates for the HTC ChaCha were announced, aside from the fact that its set to arrive on AT&T and several European carriers in Q2 2011. Facebook’s involvement in the phone is unknown. I’ve put in a request with Facebook’s press team to see exactly what involvement the company had with the development of these Facebook phones.

Do you think the HTC ChaCha is infringing on ChaCha’s trademark? Will HTC change the name or license it from ChaCha? Tell us what you think in the comments section.