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Red Hat Founder Offers Help in Apple vs.Tiger Lawsuit
Art Vanderlay writes "Robert F. Young, a founder of Linux distributor Red Hat and now owner
of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats
Canadian football team, has offered Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs a
quick way out of a lawsuit by TigerDirect over the latest version of
Tiger. According to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Young
has offered to license the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' historical use of the
word Tiger to Apple free of charge. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats have
been around since 1869. '136 years ago we were called The Tigers,' Mr.
Young said. 'If anyone owns the exclusive rights to the word tiger
with that much history and tradition, it's gotta be us.'"
Have a long history withe term Tiger too.
The retailer has owned trademarks on Tiger, TigerDirect and TigerSoftware since 1996.
Last time we discussed this, the general conclusion is that TigerDirect had *registered* trademarks on all of these *except* "Tiger". Apple, OTOH, has a registered trademark on the term "Tiger". Has anyone tracked down this mysterious registration, or is TigerDirect merely claiming that their use of the mark precedes Apple's? (As I understand it, trademarks are not required to be registered. However, it can be very difficult to prove the usage of a common mark without it.)
Honestly, I think TigerDirect is entitled to nothing more than "TigerDirect" and its derivitives. I have never seen them referred to as simply "Tiger", and I find nothing confusing about a product name vs. a company name. IMHO, TD has a long road ahead of them if they want to prove that Apple is misusing their mark. And what does TD really think they're going to get out of it anyway? The cost of the suit will drain their company dry before they ever see even a meger return. Perhaps they think Apple will settle?
TigerDirect's contention is that Apple's use of the word "tiger" has knocked the retailer from the top of search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
What a bunch of poppycock. If you do a search for "Tiger Direct" or "Tiger Computers" on Google, you get Tiger Direct. Even if you search for "Tiger", you still get Tiger Direct before Apple. But just because they happen to come up on a search for "Tiger" does not give them the right to claim the use of that mark.
Mr. Young is also currently CEO of Lulu.com, which provides independent publishers with free access to on-demand publishing tools for books, e-books, music, images and calendars.
Watch out for that website. It's a real Lulu! (insert groaning here)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Trademarking of common words is just... stupid.
You can't have these kind of issues with a made-up name like Coca-Cola, right?
Apple, Tiger, Windows, whats next? Imagination isn't a prerequisite anymore in marketing, it seems.
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Nothing more.
While Tiger Direct has a (if somewhat sleazy) case, there's little confusion between a football team and computer sw. This is just Red Hat attempting to cash in on the PR surrounding this while looking like a good guy.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Ofcourse the same can be applied to a law suit against Tiger-direct(a retailer) against apple for the use in OS X Tiger(An operating system).
.Even if they are succesfull(I highly doubt they will be) they risk a counter suit from a lot of other places.
Tiger-direct is their name not Tiger , What about Tiger games(LCD games).
The problem here is Tiger is a fairly commen word. Tiger-direct have no hope here and are just going to waste money
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
This is not just about the word "Tiger" but the use of that word with computers. I don't think that football team has much to do with computers. I bet there are a shit load of companies/products with the name "Tiger". This lawsuit has to do with the use of that word in the context of computers. And BTW, wasn't this lawsuit in USA? How can a Canadian company solve this by licensing the name?
if such companies are so eager to preserve a stupid trademark, why don't they do something to preserve their symbol: the tiger? He's in the brink of extinction, ya know?
I don't feel like it...
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
What a crock! The context of the use of the word (trademark) is important. This team was using it football, outside of the U.S. Tiger Direct trademarked it as a term applying to Software. For a company like Apple who has alread run aground of trademake issues when they used a name that conflicts with Apple Records and started dealing in the music industry, you would think they would have know better to at least do a simple search before grabbing a name was that clearly registered with the Trademark office. I hope Tiger Direct wins big on this one.
Apples didn't invent the term "Apple". But they would agressively defend the use of the name or related names within the industry if others started using them. They should expect the same when they try to grab Tiger's registered property. Some hoser football team or even some cats in Asia don't change that.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
No consumer is going to mistake Apple's Tiger OS for Tiger-Direct's discount (IBM-compatible) hardware. T-D's suit is a frivolous PR grab, much like this Ti-Cat offer. I hope Jobs gets his OS PR into lots more venues as a result of this ridiculous lawsuit, which actually will build the Apple brand in T-D's market - where they do compete, under "Macintosh" vs. "PC" brands.
--
make install -not war
Man, am I the only one that gets that this whole thing is a joke? It's obvious that this trademark would not help Apple at all. This whole thing is a joke pointing out how dumb Tiger Direct's suit is. As a bonus it gets Redhat some free PR.
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
I think everyone is missing the point here. Apple's software is not called "Tiger." Tiger is the CODE-NAME for a specific revision of the software. The software is *still* called MacOS X. To be specific, it's MacOS X.4 (10.4?). In Linux distro parlance, we'd refer to it as MacOS X (Tiger).
Thus, while I agree with Apple's fair use of the word, I don't see how they can bitch if they're asked to remove it. Similarly, I don't see how TigerDirect can really bitch since the *official* name of the product is NOT Tiger, it's MacOS X.
[move
Tiger-Direct is the name of one company, Apple is the name of the other...1 item they sell in their online store happens to have Tiger in the name. Bit of a stretch eh?
Estoppel.
You can't sit there and watch someone for over a year call their product "Tiger" and then, 1 day before it goes on sale yell foul. Tiger direct knew about Tiger for well over a year - as we all did - and therefore, they cannot, because of estoppel.
The law states that you can't know about some "wrong doing" by someone and then conveniently use it against them long after you knew about the wrong doing. Its what (in theory) prevents a cop from simply following you around all day and then giving you 24 tickets when you get home.
(tangent: if you actually had someone following you around all day, you'd probably rack up well over 1 ticket per mile... did you change lanes more than one time per 200 feet? did you signal 100 feet prior to turning right? did you allow 3 seconds between you and the car ahead of you? Did you come to a full stop before turning right on red? Did you travel more than 200 feet in the suicide lane? Did you go more than 1 mile per hour faster than the allowed speed limit? Did you go slow enough in the rain?)
That would be like me annoucing on Dec 24th, 2006 that my company, Longhorn Computers, is suing Microsoft to cease and desist from sales of Windows Longhorn. I (and everyone else) knows that Microsoft has called it Longhorn for who know s how long... its unfair to last minute try to torpedo Microsoft.
google the word "estoppel" yourself, or go read up on it on groklaw.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
As a native of Hamilton, I think I can speak on this point. Robert Young is also a native of Hamilton, and I highly doubt he bought the 'cats for financial reasons, but rather for sentimentality; ie home-town pride. He's therefore unlikely to sell the team in order to make a quick buck.
And considering he has a net worth of $2 ,000,000,000, I doubt he'll ever be forced to by financial reasons.
The was because Jobs and Wozniak were big Beatles fans and they loved Apple Records for it. They had gone to talk to Apple Records if they would let them use their name for their computer company and they explicity stated they Apple computers would not go into the music industry.
Cross-Industry trademarks don't have to negotiate. They only need to negotiate when they cross over into each others market, just like what Apple Computer is doing by entering the iTunes and audio speaker industry.
If the Tiger software was a software made specifically for football usage, then it might have encounter problems with the Tiger-Cats, but till then, Tiger OS and Tiger-Cats won't have any type of conflict.
HD Trailers
Add me to the list of people that will:
* Never shop there
* Tell my friends to never shop there
* Email them and let them know why
I'm sick of hearing about ridiculous lawsuits like this.
The problem here is Tiger is a fairly commen word.
:)
Like Apple or Windows
Oh shit, I stand corrected:
"estoppel by laches" - failure to take legal action until the other party is prejudiced by the delay.
News to me, I apologize.
Apples mistake is trying to take advantage of the "code name" and tie it to a marketted release. Tiger wouldn't have a leg to stand on if Apple simply released OS X 10.4 (or what ever the official name is) and let the trade press report the tiger name.
Apple really can't get their codename strategy in order - why is it that only apple seems to have these problems and not companies like AMD (The Athlon toilet partitions) - Intel (love the Cease and Desist orders on the Merced project) - Microsoft (pick your favorite city here)
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Tiger Direct is getting everything they need by just announcing their intent to sue. They can settle out of court for nothing 5 months from now, but they successfully got themselves into the headlines of every trade journal for a 100 dollar filing fee.