Bay Area woman built a wildfire alert app after losing her home: Now she's being sued

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- A Bay Area woman who turned personal tragedy into a wildfire alert app is now fighting in court to stop a company from launching what she says is a confusingly similar product under a similar name.

Rachael Brady, creator of the wildfire tracking app Wildfire Aware, says the idea for the app grew out of one of the most painful moments of her life: the deadly 2020 Zogg Fire in Shasta County, which destroyed her childhood home and devastated her longtime community near Redding.

Brady said the fire came just one day after her family buried her father after a yearslong battle with cancer.

"We bury my father on September 26. The next day, we wake up, and the wind is blowing," Brady said in an interview with ABC7 Eyewitness News.

Brady, who comes from a family of firefighters, volunteered as a firefighter herself and later worked for CAL FIRE as a data specialist, said that experience exposed a major problem during fast-moving fire emergencies: people often do not get critical information quickly enough. Brady used her wildfire and mapping background to build Wildfire Aware, a mobile app that pulls from public wildfire and weather data sources and presents them in a fast, map-based format.

She launched the app in 2022 and says it has been downloaded more than 30,000 times.

"You need to help find a way to get notifications more quickly out to people," Brady said. "Because the only reason that, like, my best friend's mom knew that she needed to leave (that day) was because I called my best friend who called her."

Brady said that led to the core idea behind the app: get wildfire information into the public's hands faster and with fewer steps.

Now, Wildfire Aware is at the center of a growing legal dispute with public safety software company Intterra.

According to a preliminary injunction motion filed last week in federal court in Sacramento, Brady's company alleges Intterra knew about Wildfire Aware, unsuccessfully tried to buy the app and the brand, and later moved ahead with plans to launch a new app called AwareCA in partnership with CAL FIRE.

The motion is in response to an earlier lawsuit against Brady filed by Intterra, which seeks a declaration that Intterra is not infringing, along with injunctive relief and attorneys' fees and costs against both the company and Brady personally.

Brady's motion argues the opposite, saying Intterra's own complaint acknowledges its prior knowledge of Brady's app and brand and its unsuccessful efforts to acquire them before adopting Aware-branded products.

Brady's attorney, Rachael Lamkin of global law firm Baker Botts, said the new filing does not seek to stop wildfire information from reaching the public. Instead, Lamkin said, Brady wants Intterra blocked only from launching under branding her side says belongs to Wildfire Aware.

"She doesn't want to stop another app that will warn people and help people," Lamkin said. "She just wants them to release that app under a name that's not hers."

Lamkin also said Intterra's own complaint shows the company was already familiar with Brady and her work.

"Intterra actually met with Racheal Brady. Tried to buy her application. Tried to buy her brand, tried to hire her. She declined," Lamkin said. "And after Rachel declined to sell them her intellectual property and go work for them, they just, in our view, took her brand."

The injunction motion argues that if Intterra launches AwareCA with CAL FIRE at a much larger scale, Brady's smaller app could be swallowed up by what trademark law calls "reverse confusion," where consumers assume the bigger company is the original source of the product or brand. The filing says that confusion could be especially harmful in wildfire emergencies, when people are looking for urgent public safety information and may not carefully distinguish between similarly branded apps.

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Legal experts say it can hurt the reputation of smaller app developers, which may come across as "copycats."

At the same time, the motion says Brady is not trying to stop Intterra from developing or releasing a wildfire-warning app altogether, and is not trying to block the company from working with CAL FIRE. Instead, the motion asks the judge to stop Intterra from promoting and selling wildfire alert and emergency notification products under "AWARE-formative branding," including AwareCA, while the case moves forward.

Intterra, in a statement to ABC7 Eyewitness News, said, "Intterra filed this action to obtain clarity from the court regarding the parties' rights related to aware-formative branding, and we are confident in our legal position. Our focus remains on supporting public safety agencies and the communities they serve."

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For Brady, the fight is about more than business.

"There's plenty of ways to continue on the work that they're doing," Brady said. "I just, I prefer not to use my name."

The injunction motion says Intterra publicly announced plans to launch its AWARE-branded app for public use on May 1, 2026.

A judge could decide to block the app's release under the "Aware" name as early as next week.

MAP: Track wildfires across California