Figma warns Lovable to stop using the term ‘Dev Mode’ in trademark row

Swedish startup Lovable has been hit by a ‘cease and desist’ letter from US collaborative web design app company Figma over the former’s use of the term ‘Dev Mode’ – which Figma has registered as a trade mark in the US and the EU.

Figma was launched to help people to create, share, and test designs for websites, mobile apps, and other digital products and experiences easily. Lovable’s core mission is to create apps that enable anybody to build and launch digital products, without the need to know coding.

Figma was granted a US trade mark over ‘Dev Mode’ in November 2024 and also got one from the EUIPO at the same time. However, an attempt to register the term as a trade mark in the UK was refused by the UK Intellectual Property Office.

It is not clear what the grounds for refusal were; but tech experts believe that the UK IPO examiners would have rejected the TM attempt on the grounds that ‘dev mode’ is a commonly used term in the software industry and one that has been used for many years.

This article from TechCrunch explains:

“’dev mode’ is a common term used in many products that cater to software programmers. It’s like an edit mode. Software products from giant companies like Apple’s iOS, Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Xbox have features formally called ‘developer mode’ that then get nicknamed ‘dev mode’ in reference materials… Figma tells TechCrunch that its trademark refers only to the shortcut ‘Dev Mode’  – not the full term ‘developer mode.’ Still, it’s a bit like trademarking the term “bug” to refer to ‘debugging.’”

Ironically, a week ago, Fiat Capital, the investment vehicle founded by the founder and CEO of ‘buy now, pay later’ tech company Klarna made a small angel investment in Lovable. Fiat Capital also has a stake in Figma.