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Apple Denied Trademark For 'Multi-Touch'

Posted by Soulskill on from the have-to-settle-for-imultitouch dept.

suraj.sun sends this excerpt from MacRumors: "In a decision handed down by the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Apple has been denied an application for a trademark on Multi-Touch. ... For trademarks, 'the greater the degree of descriptiveness the term has, the heavier the burden to prove it has attained secondary meaning.' The trademark attorney pointed out that the term 'multitouch' has taken on generic meaning, being used by a wide variety of publications to describe the touchscreen technology on Android phones, tablets, and notebooks."

4 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Thankfully by plover · · Score: 5, Informative

    Considering a near three-decade long history of Multi touch RnD (starting with University of Toronto, followed by Bell Labs and Xerox, et al...) a patent awarded to apple would be quite a spit in the face of everyone who made the technology possible in the first place.

    Strangely enough, this story had nothing to do with patents at all. The only thing "patent" about it is the P in the USPTO acronym, but that's not what this is about. This is about the T, which is the Trademark portion of their office.

    Not only did the summary say "trademark" but the article title even used the word "trademark." Feel free to yell about patents in context, but for now, this isn't it.

    --
    John
  2. Re:Thankfully by exomondo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Considering a near three-decade long history of Multi touch RnD (starting with University of Toronto, followed by Bell Labs and Xerox, et al...) a patent awarded to apple would be quite a spit in the face of everyone who made the technology possible in the first place.

    Not only is TFA (and even TFS) clearly about trademarks and not patents but Apple do have a patent on multitouch.

  3. Re:There should be some penalties... by rhook · · Score: 3, Informative

    Multi-touch devices have been in existence longer than Apple has been around.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-touch

  4. Re:Applied in 2007 by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Informative

    Innovation doesn't count in trademarks either - it is the mark that you use for your trade, that is all. You can be a car mechanic, innovate nothing, and still get the trademark "Fastest Car Care" for your shop.

    If Apple had invented a phrase that wasn't a simple description of what their technology did, they would have been granted the trademark.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.