Apple Goes After the Term 'Podcast'

Udo Schmitz writes "Earlier this year, Apple went up against companies using the word 'pod' in their product names. Now, Apple is going after the term 'podcasting'. Wired has the complete text of Apple's cease-and-desist letter to Podcast Ready." From the article: "Robert Scoble -- whose own company, PodTech, may be at risk in this witch hunt -- has weighed in on the issue by suggesting that the tech community as a whole adopt other terms like "audiocast" and 'videocast' (or alternately, 'audcast' and 'vidcast') to describe this type of content, while other folks feel that fighting Apple and generating a ton of negative press for Cupertino is the best solution. Our take? Apple should be happy that its golden goose is getting so much free publicity, and if it isn't, we know of several companies that probably wouldn't mind if zencast, zunecast, or sansacast became the preferred terminology."

Comments

Re:There goes my week!

[itistoday]

Worse still is that Apple is shooting themselves in the foot with this maneuver. It's better for their sales if the word "Pod" is on the tips of everyone's tongue; they're just killing of free advertising.

Re:There goes my week!

[lubricated]

If they don't protect their trademark they may lose it. I'm sure they would have a pretty good case if creative came out with a cPod. However, and it may already be too late if podcasting became a genericized term that would put a big hole in apple's trademark.