Twitpic has announced that it is taking down its picture sharing service on September 25 following a trademark dispute with Twitter.
Twitpic revealed that Twitter has sent out an ultimatum to either drop its 2009 trademark on “Twitpic” or stand to lose access to the Twitter API.
Due to the dispute, Twitpic founder Noah Everett announced that it would rather go out of its business than give up on its trademark, which Twitter has termed as “sad.”
Everett announced the decision and said that it was taking the decision as it would not be able to take on Twitter in a legal battle. Twitter on the other hand said that its opposition to Twitpic was to protect its own brand and interest.
Twitpic could have given up on its trademark and still continued, but that would have enabled others to use the term Twitpic. The photo sharing site has used the name since 2008 and applied for the trademark in 2009.
Everett said that during the “published for opposition” period for the trademark application, Twitter’s counsel approached Twitpic and demanded that it gave up its trademark.
Twitpic-Twitter worked simply together by sharing a photo anywhere and tweeting a link to it. Several other services – ImageShack’s yfrog, Photobucket’s TinyPic – also had similar mechanism.
However, after Twitter enabled users to host photos directly on its site, the use of such services were greatly diminished.
