trademark
Can the phrase &quot;who is on my wifi?&quot; be protected from use by others?
<p>I own a app called "who is on my wifi?" which offers a functionality you can guess, giving you list of devices connected to your wifi router. </p>

<p>There is one similar app which is older than mine and own a domain <a href="http://whoisonmywifi.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">whoisonmywifi.com</a> and claiming that it own a phrase and I can not use them in my app. I have following sub-questions.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Is "Who is on my wifi?" copyrighted?</p></li>
<li><p>I have gone through their site but there is no such copyright taken by them, so does just owning a .com domain mean have copyright?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Links:
My App: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.speednethalvad.whoisinmywifi" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.speednethalvad.whoisinmywifi</a>
Their App: <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whoisonmywifi.agent" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whoisonmywifi.agent</a></p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Copyright</a> applies to literary and artistic works from the moment of their creation: they do not need any form of registration - your question and my answer are copyrighted materials owned by you and me respectively.</p>

<p>However, "Who is on my wifi" is probably not a literary work - short phrases do not qualify for copyright protection.</p>

<p>That said, "Who is on my wifi" can be, and probably is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark" rel="nofollow noreferrer">trademark</a> belonging to the developers of the other app. A trademark is anything used to identify the goods and services of a particular person, their app in this case. You are not allowed to use this phrase if it could cause confusion between their product and yours - on the face of it, it is hard to see how your use wouldn't do that. You need to find another name. Unfortunately for you, the name belongs to whoever used it first.</p>

<p>You can't get a copyright on a short phrase like this. What you can get is a <strong>trademark</strong>. You get a trademark by applying for it, and possibly by using it in trade. The trademark owner can prevent you from using the trademark in trade if it could lead to confusion with their products. </p>

<p>In this case, you have two products doing the same thing with identical or almost identical product names, so if the other company has a trademark they can stop you from using that name. You should check the letter you received from them to see what they actually claimed. </p>
