Trademark and copyright are not the same. This is a trademark issue.
Also, not every name containing a trademark is a trademark violation; for instance, while "UberCheats" violates the trademark on "Uber", a name like "Watcher for Uber" would not be. The general "XYZ for Trademark" as a descriptive phrase tends to sidestep trademark issues. But on the other hand, renaming it "RideshareCheats" would sidestep the legal issue entirely and also open the door to generalizing it to cover other such services.
Whether or not a word appears in a dictionary has no bearing on its enforceability as a trademark.
Ultimately it’s up to the courts to decide. If your app could reasonably be confused for an official product of “Huevo” corp, it would constitute trademark infringement.
It’s very unlikely for anyone in the marketplace to believe “UberCheats” is made by Uber or cause confusion in the marketplace. As such they are unlikely to win a court case, a Google internal process on the other hand is another story.
If someone has a trademark, in software, for the word huevo... Then possibly. Microsoft had trademarks on the word "word" as well as "windows"
In this case though, the suit is winnable as i think you can prove no one is confused between UberEats and Uber heats. But honestly it isn't worth the hassle. The best solution is to change the name.
How did Google prevent UberCheats from litigating this issue? If UberCheats don't think they infringe the UberEats or other trademarks, they can litigate the issue normally. In this case Google served as the judge how?
This looks like a pretty clear trademark violation!
Rideshare Cheat Monitor for Uber would be MUCH safer than resuing an extremely similar sounding name. Or just RiderCheat Monitor.
Given they don't think their name is similar to UberEats / Uber, it makes me wonder whether they are scam of some sort as well.
There are 2 separate issues that you're conflating. The first is whether UberCheats infringes on Ubers trademark. I agree with you, this strikes me as infringement.
The second issue is who decides whether it's infringing or not. I don't think Google should be calling that, the takedown should come from a court with the authority to make such orders.
Basically Google is turning into Team America: World Police, and I don't like that route. It's not that I think they should keep the name, it's just scary that once again, Google has completely fucked up someone's life without any kind of legal order.
For the trademark infringement (UberEats vs UberCheats etc), if they don't think google or the person complaining (Uber) has it right, they can still absolutely go to court, and get a declaratory judgement. That's what they should do - they make lots of (what look like total BS) claims that they don't infringe, go to court and you will get an order that UberCheats does not sound similar, look similar or involve same product area (on demand delivery / transport) as UberEats etc and that they have the right to use the name and are not trading on the UberEats and other Uber product brand recognition. Good luck with that case by the way.
The platforms don't have a lot of confidence in the timeliness of claim resolution through the court process, they have 10's to 100's of thousands of issues to address weekly. Trademark ripoff apps, apps ripping off copyright, content issues (child abuse / apps that promote violence). Waiting for legal orders on any of this would be time consuming and costly. So we are clear, courts take YEARS to resolve these things. They also operate globally. Developers in Israel and Egypt and the EU and the US. Cross border legal enforcement through the courts is very hard at scale currently and there are political differences as well.
My own sense, if govt provided more timely, effective and accurate relief and determinations, folks would be more comfortable with court involvement. But at least on commercial side, given both the politization of courts (which makes rulings both unpredictable and highly variable based on judges involved) and the delays in the process there is just an understanding that to maintain functional ecosystems the platform owners need to take a more hands on approach.
I'm in another field where basically everything has gone to arbitration agreements without exception because the court process is just broken for resolutions on larger scales.
Companies are getting very careful on this.
"If a subscriber/enrollee doesn't agree to arbitration, will Kaiser
Permanente decline enrollment?
A: Yes. If a subscriber/enrollee does not agree to arbitration, they (and
their dependents) will NOT be able to enroll in a Kaiser Permanente plan."
So this is extending to nonprofits as well. What's really interesting is business to business (ie, both parties roughly similar negotiating authority) also going to arbitration. The big issue on the business side though is arbs tend to split awards (it's a safe call) rather than just destroying one person even if the case calls for that, and there is no appeal (which business doesn't like, they want at least one other crack at the apple).
There's a good chance that this was just a lawyer at Uber filing takedowns for any app with the name Uber in it related to ridesharing, regardless of what the app does.
There's precedents everywhere for this, as long as the wording meets the actual requirements listed in trademark law.
In the past, unscrupulous people would prey on unintentional confusion by naming their upstart businesses similar to established competitors, for example. There was also rampant counterfeiting. You can still see this today in jurisdictions without strong trademark laws.
This is what trademark law originally aimed to protect us consumers from. Personally, I am happy with doing my own due diligence (let the buyer beware) rather than enacting regulatory laws subject to abuse by heavy-hitters, like in this example. This, of course, is my own personal opinion.
Yes, but how do you draw the line in a way that prevents one bad actor to claim they are in your latter safe bucket of soft-infringement?
Without any stringent way of codifying it, there will only be inconsistent enforcement, and there will be people who manage to slip through the cracks.
Uber has an UberEats already, maybe someone could think UberCheats are cheat codes or deals for UberEats? There is definitely room for confusion...
The problem is that something like “are people confused” isn’t something that can be codified in the law. Try to codify an algorithm and people will game it. As such, the only solution is a judge.
I actually found it fascinating that in German speaking countries they actually pronounce it as "u" not a "ü" (more like "you-ber"), when as an American it seems clear to me that it's intended to be Über and just didn't write the umlaut.
German has fixed pronunciation rules, there is no through/trough/tough/thought confusion.
Of course for some foreign words you have to make an exception. However, Uber has a pretty minimal presence in Germany, so I doubt many people know how it is 'supposed' to be pronounced.
When I learned German on high school, it was allowed to replace umlaut. For example, instead of über, you could say ueber. Ie. effectively replacing the umlaut with its vanilla/plain vowel variant plus an e. You can do the same with ß by replacing it with two s (mind to write it like). Tho I'm not sure its correct German in all German-speaking regions I found Germans would understand me. It being useful as my keyboard layout wasn't qwertz or equiv.
I'm German, can confirm the replacements you mention is universally understood here.
In case you ever want to type German, have a look at using the US-Int layout on your US keyboard. It adds keyboard combinations like Alt+S = ß, "+U = Ü etc. It is a little cumbersome, but probably good enough for occasional foreign languages.
I was actually in Zurich not Germany. People were genuinely confused if I asked them why they didn't pronounce it Über ("That's clearly just not how it's spelled"). As a native English speaker it's just hard to wrap my head around having they much confidence in spelling based pronunciation.
I think in many English speaking countries there is little understanding that these are actually distinct characters in other countries.
It also seems popular to use the Danish/Norwegian ø instead of o, one example is an energy drink called mønster.
I think they meant to write monster but tried to be cool, however mønster is a real word in Norwegian that translates to the English "pattern". Monster in Norwegian is the same as monster in English.
For reference, ø sounds like the i in the English word bird or e in herd or herbs.
I don't think Monster energy drinks use the ø character. It has a vertical line through the o and is likely just stylistic. https://i.imgur.com/1PCs1a3.jpg
Yes, absolutely. You can trademark almost anything (including logo colors or patterns), but the protections offered by trademark law are relatively narrow (or supposed to be).
For example, for a long time there were two major companies named Apple: the computer company making the Macinthosh, and the recording studio founded by the Beatles. Since they were operating in completely different markets (computers vs music distribution) they both were able to keep their respective trademarks; but either could have easily blocked a new company called Apple in their own market.
The irony is that when apple moved into music they won the court case that they could not because of apple studios, they also got away with making the iphone, while their existed the cisco (?) iphone.
On the other hand apple goes after any little shop with a logo that looks remotely like a stylized fruit. I guess it's more about how big you are, not how right.
Yes. But generally not in the area it is for. For example Microsoft had a trademark for windows. But you can still use the word windows for glass windows, just not software
> My guess is that they use the ‘straight line’ distance rather than the actual distance traveled.
My god, don't tell me they are still doing this? The incompetence knows no bounds. Enough time to make their own chat app but no one around to dig up Dijkstra.
If that sort of error lasted more than a few days I doubt any court would believe it's a mistake. Uber has how many hundreds of engineers? And they can't figure out how to do routes? Last time I was in an Uber the driver was forced to take a specific route if I remember correct (it's been years. I hate Uber so much)
Eh, at the geographic scale Uber operates at, it's a smidge more complicated than just Dijkstra's algorithm. Not much, conceptually, but there are potential implementation issues that matter.
I had never heard of UberCheats until now. Remember the Uber app actually routes the driver from pickup to pickup so they know exactly how much they have traveled. Seriously, Uber, "as the crow flies" instead of the actual distance traveled?
This will I fear, quite happily, will unleash the Streisand effect on UberCheats.
Uber bans UberCheats and founder savvily decides to fight it instead of relaunching under a new name. I predict he will end up with a seed round. Uber will end up with more reputation as being UberDark - as in we pick the dark pattern every time we can because why not.
Why are you believing that part of the article? Trust me, Uber 100% routes using gmaps/their own maps hybrid and calculates distance from that.
It's an IMMENSLY complex calculation that will never be the same and thus gets driver complains all the time. Then the support team (at least used to) kindly show what caused the discrepancy and potentially adjusts the payout.
Source: Worked at and studied ridehailing apps for few years.
Is it really an immensely complex calculation? I worked with GIS for maps, fleet tracking, route optimisation, logistics and so on for quite a number of years. Yes, the traveling salesman problem is NP-hard and not completely solvable with current computation but... Approximations of it are actually quite feasible, and have been since way before I worked with GIS in 2005 as the platform we vendored had these features since late 90s, early 2000s.
I can completely understand that the algorithm for driver selection/matching and calculations of possible different routes for those drivers between them and possible passengers can be quite complex, it also sounds a bit into the realm of the knapsack problem (weighing in all the different passengers and drivers to given an optimal set of matches) but I don't see necessarily how the route calculation/prediction with distance would be an immensely complex one.
And I'm completely open to gain more knowledge in this area to understand it and prove my naive assumptions of the problem domain wrong, feel free to shoot me down.
The route itself not the most complex calculation, but true complexity resides in that how do you make the result is OK with both driver, rider and uber.
All kinds of things happen as you don't know the preferences of everyone in the system (does the rider want to get to the place as fast as possible, or as cheaply as possible?) and because choosing the most optimal route has random variance (stop lights, traffic etc.)
Also, there are multiple different pricing models at work constantly, at the same time, in different areas.
Some country might use a "taxi-meter-simulator" type methodology where the actual route of the driver is mapped via constant GPS and other positioning technology. This introduces the randomness of a certain % of GPS errors, which need to be corrected manually.
Other option might be a fixed price that is estimated upfront and agreed upon by both rider and driver.
Or sometimes the the fixed price is only agreed upon by the rider, and the driver gets paid via the "taximeter-style" method.
And after all this, if you want to take into account things like how to translate a pin position or restaurant name into the best possible GPS position? How to optimize what driver is the best to pickup the passenger? The lower rated driver that is close or the 5 star that is far? Can we change optimal drivers on the fly?
> Why are you believing that part of the article? Trust me, Uber 100% routes using gmaps/their own maps hybrid and calculates distance from that.
Your post sounds like a troll. But ok.
A Uber contractor launches a plugin to show how Uber is shortchanging drivers because he claims he was shortchanged. Then Uber issues a takedown of that tool and you want us to trust you because you worked at Uber.
I'm surprised there aren't more independent apps geared towards maximizing earning for drivers. Like it can't be that hard to create an artificial surge price if there's enough coordination between most regular drivers at popular spots (e.g. airports).
> I'm surprised there aren't more independent apps geared towards maximizing earning for drivers. Like it can't be that hard to create an artificial surge price if there's enough coordination between most regular drivers at popular spots (e.g. airports).
Wouldn't an app be relatively easy for Uber to monitor and subvert?
> While a reporter looked on, a group of about 50 drivers for both Lyft and Uber sat at their waiting area at Reagan National waiting while two drivers watched online to see when planes were about to land. After a plane lands, a lot of passengers request rideshare rides, which pushes demand up to begin with. But the drivers further tipped the imbalance between demand and supply by simultaneously turning off their apps five minutes before landing. Then two drivers stood at opposite ends of the waiting area, looking at the Uber and Lyft pricing for fares from the airport. They kept checking fares and watching the surge price increase until the fares were $13 higher than normal. At that point, they told the other drivers to turn their apps back on so they could begin accepting rides. The whole operation took less than two minutes, but now arriving passengers would pay around $13 more to reach their destinations.
I’m fairly certain this happened to me a couple of weeks ago at LAX. Everyone in the waiting area kept on having a low fare pop up, accept it, and then have uber try to substitute it for a much higher fare before ultimately saying there were no drivers available.
I guess, to some extent. If Uber figures out that drivers are currently participating in a mini-strike, they could just not increase the fare. But then it's just a matter of who's willing to wait it out longer. I just think drivers have a better chance at getting Uber to capitulate eventually and increase the fare if drivers act collectively.
And it's good that drivers are trying to do this organically, but I think there's value in doing this systematically and an easy to use anonymous way. Like if I wanted to participate in this at the Regan National, where do I sign up? Probably some group chat somewhere that I first have to chat-up one of the other drivers for.
I guess I want someone to make an app to monetize and gamify collective bargaining. If you want to skim 1-2% off the top or show me some dumb ads, sure. As long as you can squeeze that sweet VC lemon (or the rider) and make me more in the processes, it's all good.
Manipulating surge pricing is basically a strike, and it'd be very hard to pull off consistently when there's such a huge pool of drivers willing to work for the current rates.
I've actually created an app that maximizes hourly earnings for drivers, and I'm working on another. It's hard because the driver's TOS prohibits use of third-party apps to interact with the delivery company's servers. Just another way the definition of "independent contractor" is being stretched.
I wonder what percentage of regular full-time drivers need to participate for the occasional driver to not matter. But yeah, even if it did work there's always the threat of politicians being bought to make it illegal.
If you buy the legal fiction that Uber drivers are independent owner-operators of their own businesses, this would be illegal collusion in restraint of trade.
"Umm, sorry your honor this is not collusion, just the invisible hand of the free market guiding me when and when not to accept a ride."
What are some legal precedents of independent contractors of similar scale being found guilty of collusion? I'm thinking one-man operations of plumbers, landscapers, handy-men, etc. Have they ever even colluded successfully?
This is not surprising. Using 'Uber' in the name is trying to build off their brand which big companies will not allow. This is the reason why companies that allow you to build apps for their platform will have rules that say - you should not include the company name in your App.
Someone posted here on Hacker News how Android sued him for his app for making use of the name 'droid' (i think) or something close to the logo (can't remember the exact details and can't find the post)
No, that would be Lucasfilm. Was definitely interesting watching their commercials, and going, isn't that owned by Star Wars, oh there it says it at the bottom of the screen.
This reminds of the third party Reddit app that started life as "Reddit is Fun", which had to be re-branded to "RiF" once Reddit itself started developing its own app.
However apparently that was still unacceptable and it's currently named "rif is fun", and as much I like recursive acronyms it's a little ridiculous
It’s not like he’s trying to use Uber’s name to promote an unrelated product, he’s using it in direct reference to the company. Regardless of how the courts rule, it seems pretty silly for a company to say “our name is Uber, that is how you should refer to us” and then sue someone for making an app for using that name in direct reference to them. I’d see Uber’s side if the app was for cheat sheets on exams or something, but this is fundamentally different.
To be fair to Google & Uber, this rule is well-known amongst Android developers. You can only use names like "X for Brand", while "BrandX" "Brand X" "X Brand" can result in take-downs.
The author can simply rename the app to "Cheats for Uber" and the app should pass.
To be fair (also), UberCheats reads like something Uber is doing ("Uber cheats" their drivers out of money, for example). "Cheats for Uber" sounds like something you're doing to deprive Uber of something ("Cheats for Overwatch" sounds like an aimbot (if it existed)). You do have a valid point about "XBrand" or "BrandX" vs "X for Brand".
Are the algorithms to calculate the price different in different countries? I used to take uber frequently between two points and in the instances where the driver was obviously cheating (ignoring navigation, taking busy roads, wrong turns, roundabout ways) the price I was paying was always higher. Which tells me the algo must have been taking into account actual distance/time travelled.
My experience seems to be that you're charged for distance traveled, time, or something related (I've taken the same start/end points a few times to see that longer routes tend to cost more). But this extension seems to imply Uber pays based on "as the crow flies". If that is what they do (charge for traveled, pay for straight line), that's absolutely despicable.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] threadAnyway, it’s just a copyright takedown. Change the name and move on.
Also, not every name containing a trademark is a trademark violation; for instance, while "UberCheats" violates the trademark on "Uber", a name like "Watcher for Uber" would not be. The general "XYZ for Trademark" as a descriptive phrase tends to sidestep trademark issues. But on the other hand, renaming it "RideshareCheats" would sidestep the legal issue entirely and also open the door to generalizing it to cover other such services.
Ultimately it’s up to the courts to decide. If your app could reasonably be confused for an official product of “Huevo” corp, it would constitute trademark infringement.
Otherwise, as the other poster says, it's just about avoiding confusion. There can be Bob's Hardware and Bob's Grocery store as separate trademarks.
This looks like a pretty clear trademark violation!
Rideshare Cheat Monitor for Uber would be MUCH safer than resuing an extremely similar sounding name. Or just RiderCheat Monitor.
Given they don't think their name is similar to UberEats / Uber, it makes me wonder whether they are scam of some sort as well.
The second issue is who decides whether it's infringing or not. I don't think Google should be calling that, the takedown should come from a court with the authority to make such orders.
Basically Google is turning into Team America: World Police, and I don't like that route. It's not that I think they should keep the name, it's just scary that once again, Google has completely fucked up someone's life without any kind of legal order.
The platforms don't have a lot of confidence in the timeliness of claim resolution through the court process, they have 10's to 100's of thousands of issues to address weekly. Trademark ripoff apps, apps ripping off copyright, content issues (child abuse / apps that promote violence). Waiting for legal orders on any of this would be time consuming and costly. So we are clear, courts take YEARS to resolve these things. They also operate globally. Developers in Israel and Egypt and the EU and the US. Cross border legal enforcement through the courts is very hard at scale currently and there are political differences as well.
My own sense, if govt provided more timely, effective and accurate relief and determinations, folks would be more comfortable with court involvement. But at least on commercial side, given both the politization of courts (which makes rulings both unpredictable and highly variable based on judges involved) and the delays in the process there is just an understanding that to maintain functional ecosystems the platform owners need to take a more hands on approach.
I'm in another field where basically everything has gone to arbitration agreements without exception because the court process is just broken for resolutions on larger scales.
Companies are getting very careful on this.
"If a subscriber/enrollee doesn't agree to arbitration, will Kaiser Permanente decline enrollment? A: Yes. If a subscriber/enrollee does not agree to arbitration, they (and their dependents) will NOT be able to enroll in a Kaiser Permanente plan."
So this is extending to nonprofits as well. What's really interesting is business to business (ie, both parties roughly similar negotiating authority) also going to arbitration. The big issue on the business side though is arbs tend to split awards (it's a safe call) rather than just destroying one person even if the case calls for that, and there is no appeal (which business doesn't like, they want at least one other crack at the apple).
In the past, unscrupulous people would prey on unintentional confusion by naming their upstart businesses similar to established competitors, for example. There was also rampant counterfeiting. You can still see this today in jurisdictions without strong trademark laws.
This is what trademark law originally aimed to protect us consumers from. Personally, I am happy with doing my own due diligence (let the buyer beware) rather than enacting regulatory laws subject to abuse by heavy-hitters, like in this example. This, of course, is my own personal opinion.
But who would think "UberCheats" is something by "Uber"?? I see no possible confusion and that's the whole point of trademark law.
Without any stringent way of codifying it, there will only be inconsistent enforcement, and there will be people who manage to slip through the cracks.
Uber has an UberEats already, maybe someone could think UberCheats are cheat codes or deals for UberEats? There is definitely room for confusion...
(don't know about trademark law, but do speak German)
Of course for some foreign words you have to make an exception. However, Uber has a pretty minimal presence in Germany, so I doubt many people know how it is 'supposed' to be pronounced.
In case you ever want to type German, have a look at using the US-Int layout on your US keyboard. It adds keyboard combinations like Alt+S = ß, "+U = Ü etc. It is a little cumbersome, but probably good enough for occasional foreign languages.
It also seems popular to use the Danish/Norwegian ø instead of o, one example is an energy drink called mønster.
I think they meant to write monster but tried to be cool, however mønster is a real word in Norwegian that translates to the English "pattern". Monster in Norwegian is the same as monster in English.
For reference, ø sounds like the i in the English word bird or e in herd or herbs.
Yes, absolutely. You can trademark almost anything (including logo colors or patterns), but the protections offered by trademark law are relatively narrow (or supposed to be).
For example, for a long time there were two major companies named Apple: the computer company making the Macinthosh, and the recording studio founded by the Beatles. Since they were operating in completely different markets (computers vs music distribution) they both were able to keep their respective trademarks; but either could have easily blocked a new company called Apple in their own market.
On the other hand apple goes after any little shop with a logo that looks remotely like a stylized fruit. I guess it's more about how big you are, not how right.
https://www.theregister.com/2014/01/27/microsoft_skydrive_re...
My god, don't tell me they are still doing this? The incompetence knows no bounds. Enough time to make their own chat app but no one around to dig up Dijkstra.
This will I fear, quite happily, will unleash the Streisand effect on UberCheats.
Uber bans UberCheats and founder savvily decides to fight it instead of relaunching under a new name. I predict he will end up with a seed round. Uber will end up with more reputation as being UberDark - as in we pick the dark pattern every time we can because why not.
It's an IMMENSLY complex calculation that will never be the same and thus gets driver complains all the time. Then the support team (at least used to) kindly show what caused the discrepancy and potentially adjusts the payout.
Source: Worked at and studied ridehailing apps for few years.
I can completely understand that the algorithm for driver selection/matching and calculations of possible different routes for those drivers between them and possible passengers can be quite complex, it also sounds a bit into the realm of the knapsack problem (weighing in all the different passengers and drivers to given an optimal set of matches) but I don't see necessarily how the route calculation/prediction with distance would be an immensely complex one.
And I'm completely open to gain more knowledge in this area to understand it and prove my naive assumptions of the problem domain wrong, feel free to shoot me down.
All kinds of things happen as you don't know the preferences of everyone in the system (does the rider want to get to the place as fast as possible, or as cheaply as possible?) and because choosing the most optimal route has random variance (stop lights, traffic etc.)
Also, there are multiple different pricing models at work constantly, at the same time, in different areas.
Some country might use a "taxi-meter-simulator" type methodology where the actual route of the driver is mapped via constant GPS and other positioning technology. This introduces the randomness of a certain % of GPS errors, which need to be corrected manually.
Other option might be a fixed price that is estimated upfront and agreed upon by both rider and driver.
Or sometimes the the fixed price is only agreed upon by the rider, and the driver gets paid via the "taximeter-style" method.
And after all this, if you want to take into account things like how to translate a pin position or restaurant name into the best possible GPS position? How to optimize what driver is the best to pickup the passenger? The lower rated driver that is close or the 5 star that is far? Can we change optimal drivers on the fly?
And it goes on and on, deeper and deeper.
Your post sounds like a troll. But ok.
A Uber contractor launches a plugin to show how Uber is shortchanging drivers because he claims he was shortchanged. Then Uber issues a takedown of that tool and you want us to trust you because you worked at Uber.
The plugin AIMS to do what you said. What it actually does is something else.
Wouldn't an app be relatively easy for Uber to monitor and subvert?
Drivers are already sometimes coordinating to create surge pricing, and they don't need an app to do it: https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/uber-lyft-drivers-artificia...:
> While a reporter looked on, a group of about 50 drivers for both Lyft and Uber sat at their waiting area at Reagan National waiting while two drivers watched online to see when planes were about to land. After a plane lands, a lot of passengers request rideshare rides, which pushes demand up to begin with. But the drivers further tipped the imbalance between demand and supply by simultaneously turning off their apps five minutes before landing. Then two drivers stood at opposite ends of the waiting area, looking at the Uber and Lyft pricing for fares from the airport. They kept checking fares and watching the surge price increase until the fares were $13 higher than normal. At that point, they told the other drivers to turn their apps back on so they could begin accepting rides. The whole operation took less than two minutes, but now arriving passengers would pay around $13 more to reach their destinations.
And it's good that drivers are trying to do this organically, but I think there's value in doing this systematically and an easy to use anonymous way. Like if I wanted to participate in this at the Regan National, where do I sign up? Probably some group chat somewhere that I first have to chat-up one of the other drivers for.
I guess I want someone to make an app to monetize and gamify collective bargaining. If you want to skim 1-2% off the top or show me some dumb ads, sure. As long as you can squeeze that sweet VC lemon (or the rider) and make me more in the processes, it's all good.
I've actually created an app that maximizes hourly earnings for drivers, and I'm working on another. It's hard because the driver's TOS prohibits use of third-party apps to interact with the delivery company's servers. Just another way the definition of "independent contractor" is being stretched.
I wonder what percentage of regular full-time drivers need to participate for the occasional driver to not matter. But yeah, even if it did work there's always the threat of politicians being bought to make it illegal.
What are some legal precedents of independent contractors of similar scale being found guilty of collusion? I'm thinking one-man operations of plumbers, landscapers, handy-men, etc. Have they ever even colluded successfully?
Someone posted here on Hacker News how Android sued him for his app for making use of the name 'droid' (i think) or something close to the logo (can't remember the exact details and can't find the post)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droid_(Star_Wars)#Trademark
However apparently that was still unacceptable and it's currently named "rif is fun", and as much I like recursive acronyms it's a little ridiculous
https://trademarks.justia.com/771/72/apple-77172511.html
The author can simply rename the app to "Cheats for Uber" and the app should pass.