Inkwell iOS app stuck in App Review limbo over a dead Apple trademark

Manton Reece submitted Inkwell, the iOS companion app to Micro.blog, to Apple on April 21st and a month later is still trapped in review. He’s worked through a parade of rejections covering reporting tools, Sign in with Apple bugs, in-app purchase rules, account deletion, and design nitpicks, stripping out posting features and pulling the app from non-US storefronts to fit the ‘reader app’ or ‘companion app’ carve-outs.

The sticking point is a trademark objection under guideline 5.2.5. Apple trademarked ‘Inkwell’ in 2002 for a short-lived handwriting feature in Mac OS X Jaguar; the trademark is now listed as dead by the USPTO, but still appears on Apple’s internal trademark page. Other Inkwell-named apps have shipped without issue, and the Android version was already approved by Google last month. Reece has appealed to the review board and is waiting.

The broader point is about leverage. Apple is using App Store gatekeeping to enforce a trademark claim it abandoned decades ago and could not assert in court, with no recourse for the developer beyond rebranding or waiting out the appeal. It’s a clean illustration of how platform control extends company power past what the law would actually grant.