When Naming Your Feature Gets You a Letter from Figma

TL;DR: Don’t get too attached to that perfect product name until you check it’s actually up for grabs. Because the last thing you want is a trademark letter turning your launch into a legal headache.

Ever picked a name you thought was clever, only to get a legal letter telling you to stop?

That’s what happened to Lovable Labs when they named their tool Dev Mode—a phrase Figma has locked down with a, controversial, trademark. Figma’s legal team sent a formal (but not overly hostile) letter asking Lovable Labs to stop using the term.

The reason?

Figma owns the trademark for “DEV MODE” and has used it heavily to promote part of their platform that helps bridge the gap between design and development.

Here's the key part of the letter:

“We’re flattered that you agree ‘Dev Mode’ is the ideal name… But as inventors and entrepreneurs, we’re sure you can understand that we need to protect our intellectual property.”

Translation? “Nice try, but it’s ours.”

They’ve asked Lovable Labs to rename their tool and scrub all mentions of "Dev Mode" from their site and marketing. The tone is calm and reasonable, but the message is clear: stop using our name.

If you're building a design tool, app, or feature—especially one for devs and designers—you need to be careful about naming.

Just because something sounds generic doesn’t mean it’s free to use. “Dev Mode” feels like a pretty broad term, but Figma registered it, promoted it, and now they’re enforcing it.

What You Can Learn from This

• Check trademarks before you fall in love with a product name. Tools like USPTO or EUIPO help.
• Even if a term feels generic, someone might already own it in your niche.
• Big companies will protect their IP—even if they do it with a polite letter first.

This sort of thing happens more than you'd think.

As product builders, we focus on names that feel right for our users. But trademark law doesn’t care about that—it’s about who filed first, who’s used it visibly, and who’s prepared to enforce it.

Figma’s decision to send a legal letter might follow standard practice, but it’s rubbed a lot of folks in the design community the wrong way. It feels heavy-handed, especially given how common the term “Dev Mode” is across tools.

"This isn’t acceptable. I’m off this week, will be giving PenPot a good proper look. Figma can kindly fuck off with the Adobe style shenanigans…" - Reddit user grympy

If Lovable Labs had pushed back, this could’ve turned into something much messier—and that’s exactly what some designers worry about.