ComPlexion and legal issues

Jim Bennett | Sep 26, 2014

I’ve been working on an open source Plex REST library. The idea behind it is to provide a simple way to connect to a Plex media server and get info on the currently playing movie or TV show. The most important info being a link to IMDB - pretty much every time my wife and I watch something we dig out of phones to look up an actors name or what else we have seen them in.

The reason I’m developing this library is so that I can use it in an upcoing iOS app that acts like a second screen, providing these details in an easy to use way. More info on this will be coming soon once it’s more complete, but if you’d like to be a beta tester for the app then email me at jim@moomoo.io .

I named my library ComPlexion - simply because it sounded good, included Plex in the name and I’m rubbish at picking names so went for the first one I could think of. However, I decided to have a read of the Plex legal pages with regard to their trademarks just to make sure that I named my app appropriately and email a link to ComPlexion to the Plex legal team just to verify.

As it turns out, they don’t want me to use the name. According to their legal page:

You may:

  • Name your website, product, or application with something unique, that satisfies the other Guidelines.
  • Feel free to include language on your site explaining that your application “Works with Plex”.
  • Use “for Plex” following the name of your application, provided that the name of your application is unique.

You may not:

  • Use Plex or derivatives thereof in the name of your application

So looks like ComPlexion is out. I’ve renamed it to:

RestAndRelaxForPlex

Not the best name, but it abides by their rules. It’s not a huge problem, they have built a great app and ecosystem so it’s only fair not in infringe on their tradmarks or imply that they are behind or endorse a third party product.

The new GitHub repo is here.