Australian Startup Claims Apple Stole Its Name For The New Health Software In iOS 8

The Melbourne-based startup, which has owned both the HealthKit Twitter handle and the healthkit.com website since 2012, has a health platform that connects patients and doctors similar, to Apple's service of the same name that's coming to the new iOS 8 operating system for iPhones. Although the company is based in Australia, its website indicates it's a global platform.

"It is very flattering that they like our name, but I'm a little let down because how hard would it have been to spend five seconds to put HealthKit.com into their browser and find us?" Alison Hardacre, co-founder and managing director of HealthKit told told Wired. "Everybody worries that Google or Apple will come into their space and their business will die, but no one thinks that company will come into that space and use the same name!"

Hardacre also told Wired its website has experienced a surge of traffic since Apple's WWDC announcement Monday. The company has since taken to its Twitter account to voice its complaints.

Apple has a history of trademarking all possible names for its products (when switching from naming its OS X system after cats to California cities, Apple trademarked everything from California to Redwood to Diablo), so it's unusual that Apple didn't look into HealthKit's domains before the announcement.

Though it may appear to be a lack of oversight on Apple's part, one justification for this is that prior to Monday's WWDC Keynote, Apple's HealthKit was known as HealthBook. Mark Gurman, who reports on Apple news for 9to5Mac and broke the original HealthBook story, speculates the sudden name change had something to do with the name HealthBook leaking early.

In spite of the Australian startup's claims that Apple stole the name HealthKit for its new product, however, it's important to note HealthKit is actually just the name of Apple's API-the platform's programming interface-and the name of Apple's app is Health.