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.'"

Comments

Tiger?

[rjelks]

I think your right. If the trademark isn't in the same catagory, it shouldn't help out Apple too much. It is kind of cool to see Red Hat offering the help anyway.

Tigers are boring. Now Ligers are pretty much my favorite animal...they're bred for their skills in magic.

Re:From one hole to another?

[avandesande]

I dont necessarly think that a tech mail order business is in the same domain as an operating system revision name. i guess a judge will decide this.

Trademark records at the USPTO

[rufusdufus]

There are 73 trademarks with the term "Tiger" in them in the "software" category.

Tigerdirect's claim forTigerdirectwas filed on Nov 14 2001.
Apple's claim forTiger was filed on July 2, 2003.

While it is obvious that Apple could not license the name from a football team in order to help their case because they are not the same "Goods and Services" section, [IANAL] I don't think they could license the name from one of the other people in the software section either. The whole point of trademarks is to avoid confusion in the market, and Tigerdirect is claiming confusion with their trademark and apples, not some third party's trademark.

Re:Oh hells yeah

[snorklewacker]

Since 2001, that would be World Wrestling Entertainment. They lost a court case to the World Wildlife Fund over the "WWF" moniker.