CM team announced yesterday on Google+ and Facebook that they have received a Cease & Desist concerning the widget Chronus, the name of which apparently is a registered trademark.
For those who haven’t heard of the widget, Chronus is CyanogenMod’s popular lock screen widget that was introduced in December last year. The widget displays the clock in a Holo-esque fashion along side with configurable calendar and weather information. Chronus also has a home screen clock widget available. The following is the post that brought this issue to the public
Pitfalls of being so big
CyanogenMod is a large entity, with millions of users and a healthy amount of news coverage. Unfortunately, this occasionally has some unintended consequences.
It seems that the trademark for software applications of the name “Cronus” has been previously granted to another entity. Though our widget “Chronus” is in no way similar to this entities’ software, we have been served with a Cease & Desist.
While we maintain that there is no infringement, we likewise, do not have the time or resources to fight this C&D. Therefore, we will be changing the name of the widget.
Pick our LockClock widget’s new name
“Lemons into lemonade” and all that, help us pick a new name for the widget! As with previous posts of this nature, the final selection will be made by the CM team and is not subject to a popularity poll; this is not a contest.
The team claims they did not violate the trademark and that the widget and the trademarked software have no similarities (the software name is Cronus). But regardless of that, they will not pursue this C&D in court and asked for the community’s help to pick the new name.
Among the posted suggestions that caught my eye were Cease&Desist and Not-Cronus. The final name has been revealed to be cLock.
After almost 4 hours from the first post, the team said they chose the community suggested name cLock for its simplicity and its descriptive nature. After a couple of minutes they posted that they have finished changing the widget’s name throughout the project. The post signaling the changes is bellow.
Goodbye Chronus, it was nice knowing you
Thanks all for the suggestions, we’ve selected “cLock” from the list of suggestions as the new name for the widget: Simple and self-explanatory.
The name change has just been merged.
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/