Two applications with the same name

Hi,

I have an application, that has been available in Nokia Store since March. Today I was searching for something totally unrelated, and happened to come across another app with exactly same name as mine. The first comment of that one is from August 23th, so it's probably a quite recent addition.

The name of the apps is something really common, two words combined into one, both starting with an upper case letter. Applications with same or similar (the same two words separately) name also exist for other platforms, so I'm not in any way trying to claim exclusive rights to the name.

However, even though functionality of the two apps is different, it's related to the same thing, so I'm afraid it might happen at some point that an user would see or hear of either of the apps somewhere, and download the wrong one (the wrong one might also be the only one that shows up in search, if the other one is not supported for the user's device).

According to this thread, it's not supposed to be possible for two content items to have same names, even for a different version of the same app:
[url]http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Discussion/showthread.php?201155-Duplicate-app-name-for-different-platforms[/url]

Has this rule been changed recently, or are the submissions not at all checked for duplicate names? If the names don't have to be unique, is it possible for anyone to create and sell their own version of "Camera Lover Pack" or "Angry Birds" too?

AFAIK, it would be really hard to not permit applications from different publishers on having same/similar names for their apps, anyway as your link was asking for same publisher having two separate apps having same name, which indeed is different story, and would not be permitted.

You definitely are allowed to use word Argry, and you can use Bird in your application name, though copying some well known names which might be registered is not permitted, f.ex. you are not allowed to call your applciation Pepsi, Cola-Cola etc. unless you have permission from the trademark owner.