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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.'"
I don't know whether that will be a whole lot of help, as service and trade marks are limited to being in respect of some specific area of trade/ practice, and I don't see a whole lot of overlap between sports teams and computer software.
If someone were looking for prior art, I think William Blake (1757-1827) got there before a Canadian football team:
The Tyger
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
And what the shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
While the "free" license is a good gesture, it's also indirectly implying that Apple needs approval from other entities to trade, and that's the risk that shouldn't be ignored.
What if this Tiger-Cats is bought by another business?
And not to mention TigerDirect is more or less in the same trade (which determines the trademark's validity) as Apple, and sports is not yet computer hardware-related until robots start playing.
If Apple wants to trade as 'Apple' exclusively in computer hardware, then it must be prepared that TigerDirect wants to trade as 'Tiger' exclusively.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Nice move, but it is moot.
Now for my opinion. I think it is all BS. Apple is clearly not trying to take anything away from TigerDirect (who btw, has pretty damn good prices, and if you call them, often you can wiggle the price down more if you tell them you are a small buisness, get an account executive, not the sales data entry guy).
But TigerDirect must defend itself. If Apple wins, then what it will become a generic term, worthless. What if the next big thing is the Tiger Hard Drive, or Tiger DVD burner, or Tiger RAM? Then one day, maybe I'll open up TigerDiscount and sell all those Tiger products.
If Apple would have added more to the name like TigerMAC, then I think they would have a better chance.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Does anyone know what happened to the Fedora Vs Fedora Trademark Problem? http://www.fedora.info/redHat.shtml I think this topic was posted on /. way back in 2003
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/20/1722215.shtm l?tid=110&tid=187
I am really surprised to see much info on how
the issue got settled.
Reminds me of when Tiger Woods tried to stop a golf course from using its name "Tiger's Eye", which it was named way before Tiger Woods became Tiger Woods. He obviously lost, but he did manage to get Nike to remove all of it's products from the Pro Shop!
PtPete
> Coca-Cola isn't a made-up name. Its a combination of Coca beans and Cola nuts.
Just like Tiger Direct is a combination of two words, Tiger and Direct. The folks that own Coca-Cola do not go out suing people for using the word Coca or the word Cola. Nor should Tiger Direct be able to stop someone from using Tiger.
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Don't laugh. If you incorporate a company in Canada and you don't want to bother with a name, the company is automatically assigned a number, along with the province in which it was incorporated (for example, 3617824 Nova Scotia Inc.). In fact, all companies must have unique names, so using the number avoids the fee you incur to check the database to make sure your name hasn't been taken.
This is why, whenever you hear of shady dealings in Canada, often they have to do with "numbered companies" that are just empty shells that exist only for accounting games.
As a cool riff on this, there is a trendy Italian restaurant in Toronto that the owners decided to name after the numbered company they set up to administer it: 1447582. Everybody just calls it "seven numbers".
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
But they are successful!
:-).
It can't be a coincidence that about the time the lawsuit broke, I suddenly found Tiger Direct ads appearing on Slashdot. In fact, as I write this, there is one sitting happily on top of my screen. They are attempting to take advantage of the free publicity which was the true purpose of the suit.
You might be interested in the documents in the lawsuit. It doesn't strike me as a well-argued suit and I'm confident it will fail.
But a lot more people have heard of Tiger Direct now than then, and they might get some sympathy as the "underdog". Unfortunately about 90% of them are Mac users and Tiger doesn't deal with Macs at all. So I doubt it will be the windfall Tiger would like to see.
Of course the story we've responded to also has the same purpose. I laughed out loud when I read it, so it's okay by me. But this story was meant to provide publicity for the team and Bob Young.
And it has
D
Too true , perusing this it does seem like a 17 page publicity stunt(I am just skimming ..) .
.
Works fairly well also
*enter conspiracy mode*
Ofcourse Apple gets a few nice links too...Conspiracy theory hm
So tiger direct gets an advertisment on slashdot , apple computers gets advertisments on legal journals and other areas that would not normaly feature them.
I think we have the making of a fairly good conspiracy theory here
*end conspiracy mode*
*enter silly teritory*
Ofcourse it could backfire and open up a whole host of legitimate(and i lose the term loosly)law-suits from companys such as Tiger Games and um Tony the Tiger.
Could end up with them having to rename themselves to -Direct (Read Minus direct).
*end silly bit of post*
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
and that's probably why it's called "iTunes Music Store" not "Apple Music Store".
Is currently in opposition. Presumably Tiger Direct is the one opposing it. Apple got lucky in obtaining the mark because it was able to distinguish the other Tiger software marks as being for industrial uses. They will have a harder time with the opposition.
My guess is that they will settle before the outcome of the opposition is determined. A finding that there is a likelihood of confusion from the trademark office would seriously hurt Apple's case and give Tiger leverage to demand a higher payout.
"butthead vendor" is kinda funny though... I like it.
Slashdot needs revenue.
I enjoy Slashdot.
I enjoy reading Slashdot for free.
Viewing ads is a small price for the entertainment value I get out of the site. If I don't view them, there's a decent likelihood that Slashdot won't have sufficient revenues to survive without having to take strong measures like mandatory subscriptions.
Therefore I have no problem viewing ads and will never use an ad blocker.
D
I thought that Exxon had the US Tiger trademark. Their gasoline ads go back long before Al Gore invented the internet and Tiger Direct's existance. I bought a Tiger Travler soda mug with the Exxon logo back in the early 1990s.
But then there's Tony the Tiger appearing on the boxes of Kelloggs Sugar Frosted Flakes. Tony the Tiger was around in the 1950's.
Perhaps Tiger Direct is the infringer and not Apple. This is clearly a case of "prior art".
this link to tiger direct is solely a result of tiger direct's lawsuit against apple computers and has nothing to do with any product with the name tiger. therefore any trademark confusion as a result of this link could have been prevented by tiger direct not filing suit and as such apple is not to blame.
blarg.