Question

I’m interested in learning about all ways in which publishing an app on Google Play using a particular package might constrain the packages that I, and others, could use to publish apps in the future. I’m interested both in what is allowed by the Google Play system, what is allowed by Google’s policies, and what is allowed under the law.

I’m aware of, and have carefully noted, the following related discussions:

Reserving a package name on Google Play

How can you reserve a name for an application?

One aspect not resolved by those discussions is whether one app can have a package name that includes, as a prefix, the package name of another app and, if so, whether the two apps would have to be owned by the same developer account. This impacts, in particular, upon the question of whether an entire family of package names (e.g., all names that start with the reverse of one’s own, owned, domain) can be reserved by registering (not necessarily publishing) an app having a package that is just that reverse domain (e.g., com.naifapps) and nothing more.

Here are a few specific examples that I’d like to understand:

1. Can two apps be published, one of which uses a package that is a proper prefix of the package of the other (e.g., one app having the prefix com.naifapps, and another having the prefix com.naifapps.candide)? If not, you could really limit your future options if you published an app under the package having your own reverse domain, and nothing more.

2. In situation 1, could the two apps be owned by two different (unrelated) developers? If the answer is no, but the two would be allowed if owned by a single account, then by uploading and saving a dummy app that has a package name equal to the reverse of your own, owned, domain, and nothing more, you might be able to effectively reserve the entire family of names starting with that reverse domain for your own future use. However, as noted in item 1 above, if Google Play were to disallow apps sharing the same package prefix, then you might be forever preventing yourself from publishing anything further using packages that start with the reverse of your own domain name.

3. Suppose I own the domain naifapps.com, and release two apps on Google Play under package names com.naifapps.candide and com.naifapps.erendira. Then, is there anything to stop some other dev from later releasing an app using the same reverse domain at the start of the app’s package name (e.g., using the package com.naifapps.bwahaha)? In other words, is my publication of an app whose package merely starts with a reverse domain name sufficient to “reserve” that package prefix for my own account’s exclusive use?

4. Would my ownership of the naifapps.com domain, in and of itself, be sufficient to cause Google to remove apps published by another developer that used a package containing com.naifapps as a prefix, if I were to complain to Google that such an app appeared to be infringing?

5. If someone other than I were to publish an app using the prefix com.naifapps, could that prevent me, as the owner of the domain naifapps.com, from using the reversal of my own domain in packages of apps that I publish (e.g., com.naifapps.erendira)?

Answer 1

As I understand things:

1. Yes, com.naifapps and com.naifapps.candide can both be published.
2. Yes, they can be published by different developers.
3. No, there’s nothing other than convention and common sense stopping someone from doing that. Since it only prevents someone else from using that exact same package name, it’s not that important, and it seems unlikely anyone would.
4. It’s hard to know what Google would do, but I suspect that if it seemed clear someone did that with malicious intent, the fact that you own the domain would probably be enough to put Google on your side.
5. No, see 1. and 2.