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Apple, Startup Go To Trial Over 'Pod' Trademark
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Apple is scheduled to go to trial with a startup to fight over a three-letter word: Pod. The trademark battle centers on independent entrepreneur Daniel Kokin, founder of startup Sector Labs, and his video projector in development called Video Pod. Apple had previously filed oppositions against Kokin's usage of 'Pod,' alleging that it would cause customers to confuse it with Apple's iPod products. ... Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. Sector Labs is the only company to go to trial with Apple over using the 'Pod' branding. Ana Christian, Kokin's lawyer, says the fight is about more than allowing small businesses to use 'Pod' in their product names. She noted a trend in the tech industry, in which large corporations have been attempting to assume ownership of ordinary words."
I wonder how much money is wasted everyday by these useless unethical corporate bullshit lawsuits. Clearly, things are completely out of control when people waste money fighting over common usage of common words. Hey Mr. Jobs, are you proud about all the money you waste?
A few years ago, beer companies in Canada were suing each other over thinks like putting photos of water droplets on their boxes, and using really common plain language terminology. Utterly pointless and all it did was buy BMWs for the lawyers on retainer.
The defendant should submit Invasion of the Body Snatchers as prior art.
The point isn't about the origins but the actual product. It shouldn't matter if your mom thought that VideoPod was made by Apple or not, what should matter is whether she thought a VideoPod was an iPod video. THAT is the point of trademarks, not to give corporations the power to change the English language. If something was called a VideoPod and was a generic MP3 player, Apple might have a case, but if it was something like... a VHS player you hook up via USB to rip your old VHS tapes into a digital format, it doesn't matter what the name is, Apple has no offering similar to it so the name should stay.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Its also written into law that if you do not "rigorously defend" trademarks/service marks, they can be ruled in the public domain ..
You also to pass a reasonability test... first off PODS storage is *not* actually called or branded as such, they are an acronym for Portable On Demand Storage (a side business of Public Storage iirc).. secondly its not "pod" as a unique name, its about Pod as part of a name in context of consumer electronics devices..
Regardless of how long the video pod device has been in gestation or internally named as such, the fact of the matter is that Apple has spent billions promoting the iPod in that market, and as such any newcomer to market has to adapt.. not the other way around..
For case studies on Copyright/Trademark defense you should look up Kleenex, Xerox, Lexis-Nexis vs Toyota(Lexus), Infinity vs Nissan (Infinity branded cars) for some of the history (from both sides of the argument as well as "equal vs equal" battles in the case of the Infinity trademark.
Its *reasonable* to state that a consumer seeing a VideoPod in a consumer electronics store would assume it to be related to iPods in some way.. that same reasonable assumption cannot be said regarding Pipeline management, Moving supplies or seeds (though I think you are reaching very firmly into ludicrous land when you grabbed at that one)
its not again about seeing "any use of the generic syllable pod in a product name.. " but rather the appending of pod to a product name in such a way that it implies a relationship to iPod/etc
Your guess is very wrong, the defendant in this suit is coming out with a product 10 years after billions of advertising have been spent on ipod/ipad/etc and trying to ride coat tails.. and using this as "free advertising" for a product that has not made it to market despite 12 years of work on it.. remember naming is not like patents.. even if he had INTERNALLY named the product VideoPod years before apple filed its first use of the iPod trademark.. the fact that he was not in fact using it in any way and had not defended it means he loses it
They don't own pod, but they do own iPod, which they will probably argue is similar in name and general industry as they product that they allege trademark violation against. I think they may have marketed one of their older iPods as a video iPod when it first got the video capabilities, so it might be fairly easy to say that a consumer might be confused. As for why they don't go after the other companies, it seems fairly obvious from the name and description that these companies aren't releasing anything similar to a PMP. Brand confusion is much less of an issue in these cases.
I don't think Apple will win this one, but it's probably not as clear cut as you make it out to be. Also, companies have to defend their trademark or they risk losing it. I'm surprised Apple's legal team has time for this considering that they've been suing or getting sued by several other companies in the last year or so.
The logo is here for comparison. According to the article, it sounds like standard due diligence was done by apple. I dont think they wheeled in the lawyers. But who knows. I guess the secondary issue was of more interest. Many New Zealanders took it as another "attack" by a US corporation. A david and goliath media portrayal. Keep in mind NZ is anti-nuclear and forbids nuclear weaponeed ships ins its waters(for which the US despises us for). So really it was a storm in a tea cup.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Set up your company abroad then. You are allowed to have multiple mailing and corporate addresses you know.
all the examples you gave, are AMERICAN brands. america, the place in which ownership of words, even, recently, basic logic axioms are allowed.
america's stupidity and faults, do not make a justified case for letting people own GENERIC names for objects. its morondom.
Read radical news here
The lawyers are also in a position where they have the expectation of 'expert knowledge' in the area of law. So, when the lawyer recommends that they must pursue a lawsuit or the company risks losing the trademark, the company executives will generally follow their recommendation. It's not as if Steve Jobs is going to study up on the intricacies of every legal case that Apple is involved with and override his own legal department.
It may have happened when certain design decisions were being weighed up against the engineering ramifications (eg. the iPhone 4 antenna issue), but I doubt he'd risk his company's trademark(s) so Apple could feel a little bit more community loving.
This reminds me of a fortune cookie I've seen:
In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc. Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News, Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts. Lawyers and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure out how the pie gets divided. Neither profession provides any added value to product."
According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has 10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population. The U.S. has 200 lawyers and 700 accountants. This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack." Could Dick Butcher have been an efficiency expert?
-- Motor Trend, May 1983
Don't blame the lawyers for doing the bidding of the biggest corporations.
When you've got a system that so biased in favor of the rich, they're just going to continue pressing their advantage until you're a serf with a MasterCard.
Whenever there's a regulatory law passed, there's over a billion dollars an hour spent trying to bend it to their advantage. The starting salary for any congressional staffer who's making the jump to lobbying is $750,000.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But there can't be a firebird web browser...
People STILL want to forget firebird (the database) being complete dicks over this, but I won't let them.