Instagram has sent a letter to the British creator of the anti-litter application Littergram, demanding it change its name.
Littergram is a not-for-profit venture started in 2014, which encourages people in Britain to take photos of litter and send them to their local councils through the dedicated app.
Instagram's lawyers though have given it just three months to change the name or face being taken to court.
The small app's owner, Danny Lucas, has recorded an impassioned plea to Mark Zuckerberg, whose Facebook owns Instagram. He claims that having to change the name at this stage would "destroy all our ingenuity and hard work".
"I would like to hope that with your own personal ambitions to help our planet that instead of spending money on lawyers and eliminating great causes such as Littergram you will join forces with me and help me take this forward," he said.
The lawyers however claim that the brand "utilises and relies on social media usage" like Instagram. It cannot therefore be used "in relation to services which are core" to their client's app.
Lucas' aim with Littergram was to help educate children about the negative effect of littering in the country and to make it as anti-social as drink driving.
What shocks us here at Pocket-lint is that Instagram, a name that is itself an amalgam of other brands (Kodak Instamatic cameras anyone), is clamping down on another, non-rivalling application simply for putting "gram" at the end.
What's next? Facebook taking a pop at Penguin Books? Instagram going after Smash Instant Mash? WhatsApp going after a couple of beer-drinking frogs?
Sigh.