HealthKit - Apple stole our business name

A few years ago I was the developer at a startup in the process of re-branding.

The application was, at the time, for Health professionals to manage their bookings, patients, billing etc. It had existed previously under the names CounselLink and SpecialistLink, but both of those seemed too tied to the psychology market in which the founders began.

The business owners, Alison Hardacre and Lachlan Wheeler, hired me to take the software to the next level, re write it from scratch to work for practitioners of all disciplines around the globe. Fast-Forward a few months in the development life-cycle, we have an app which can support any health market in the world, ready for funding models to be plugged in, with all of their various non-standard oddities, a full integration with the Australian medicare system - all in PHP (gasp!), and ideas in the pipeline about being a 'Global health marketplace' - a place for practitioners and patients to find each other, and data aggregation to solve the world's health problems.

We needed a new name.

After countless 'brainstorming' meetings (over good wine and beer), we still hadn't got on to anything new. And as always with these things, the name came to me when I wasn't even thinking about it, on my walk to work.

HealthKit.

But not only HealthKit, The whole 'Kit naming scheme, I had a home automation kit on the side, so I figured HomeKit, And we were looking at building a generic scheduling app, SchKit... No one argued against me keeping that one.

I've got to say I'm a little chuffed that Apple like the name - or as the Original HealthKit put it, flattered. And for that matter - they seem to like the application's core as well.

The application still exists, and is thriving in the Australian Market (Maybe in other countries as well, I didn't stay long enough to keep tabs on that).

https://www.healthkit.com/ (Sorry about the non-mobile UI, It looks like that ticket is still on the backlog)

Anyway, we are well used to Apple taking over the functions of our startups, but the name does seem just a little bit mean.

[Edit]

It looks like no one ever registered the business name or trading name in Australia or any other country.... however someone (Apple, right?) DID apply for them in the US.

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/05/30/healthbook-healthkit-trademarks/

[Edit 2] We should totally release a web browser and call it webKit... Nicely pointed out