Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.