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Apple Denied Trademark For 'Multi-Touch'
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."
It's good to see a common sense result come out of the USPTO, I'm really hopeful that with additional funds gained from the recent patent bill the USPTO will be able to reach similarly sane conclusions when bad software patents are files too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the USPTO would start rejecting vague software patents instead of granting them to every patent-troll that asks for one, the world would be a better place...
-Keeps dreaming-
How could Apple try to trademark 'Multi-touch' with a straight face?
This is like Ford trying to trademark 'Four-wheel drive' or Sony trying to trade mark 'Entertainment Center'.
Blatantly trying to abuse the system like this should warrant a paddling.
This was not about patents (which Apple richly deserves to own). It was about a Trademark.
Correct, BUT.
It's the same general organization. All I am saying is, it's good to see a result come out of one part that is reasonable - and that hopefully the OTHER part will start to issue more reasonable verdicts also when they have enough money to do proper patent examination.
It's a ray of hope from a very large cloud that until now had been raining on us.
It has always seemed to me rather loose language to say something is "multitouch"
Yes, I didn't even know they were trying to trademark the term. it does seem overreaching, and as they said it's obviously a term in widespread use. If they had tried to trademark it many years back, they might have had a case... possibly. The term is awfully generic.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It should be easy to come up with a less-descriptive name. They could call it "Squidly", "Octie", "Starfish", or "Tentacular", something that makes people think of multi-touch creatures.
Or they could do it like companies did in the mid 20th century, by deliberately misspelling parts of the name: "Multy-Tuuch", "Mani-Fyngers", or "Repeat-O-Poke". Or maybe something more 90's, like "Apple Bob". In the 2000's Apple did a great job marketing the iFixing of nouns, so they could use something like "iSteve" or "iMultitouch" or "iShocker" (rule 34 dictated I had to place that one in here.) They could stick with the Apple theme and call it something like a "Granny Smith" or "Honey Crisp".
Anyway, there are lots of names they could trademark. They just have to pick one.
John
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
Google Patent gave me 991 hits for "multitouch". The oldest was from 1972 and used as:
"In an example of practice of the invention, a foil electret for use in a multitouch selector was prepared from a 1 mil (25.4 micrometer) thin film of polyfluoroethylene-propylene plastic material, marketed commercially under the tradename TEFLON FEP, with a 1,000 A. metallic layer on one of its surfaces."
Sure sounds like people understood the concept of multitouch years before Apple was even founded.
While Apple may have been one of the first companies that implemented multi-touch, there is nothing novel about the concept. It was made possible by the invention of capacitive touch screens (which Apple had nothing to do with - Apple was simply one of the first companies to use a capacitive touch screen) and it was widely known that one of the advantages of capacitive touch screens over resistive touch screens was that capacitive touch screens were superior for multi-touch. Therefore, Apple patented the concept of using someone else's new technology for one of it's primary intended purposes.
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.
If you are really serious about reform, and you applaud USPTO's rejection of this term, you must also support revoking the Microsoft trademark on "Windows".
Is it really still not obvious to some people why Windows is a valid trademark? Same as Apple? Yes they are generic words but they aren't generic words describing the entity/product. Windows (the Microsoft trademarked name) is not a windows, it is an Operating System. Apple (the Apple Inc. trademarked name) is not an apple, it is a Company. MultiTouch would be just describing the invention multitouch, just as App Store is just describing an application (or commonly termed 'app') store.
The Apple trademark lawyers in this instance were either very stupid, very lazy, or very self-interested. ;)
Would you settle for "very rich"?
Actually, that's what sets you apart from them. They wouldn't settle for merely "very rich", which is why they're now "filthy rich".
John
Windows is trademarked as the name of an operating system, for which it is not a descriptive term. Perhaps you'd also like to bitch about GM trademarking the name "Volt"?
You can describe an operating system without calling the whole thing Windows. It is very difficult to describe a touch interface that tracks multiple fingers at a time without calling it Multi-Touch.
Americans would fund their government departments instead of asking them to be commercially indepedent so that instead of focussing on collecting as many fees as possible they can focus on quality.
But then, an American might have to pay TAXES! Boogaa boogaa! Cut funding to the bone and yet get bare bones service.
The USPTO is as good and as bad as Americans are allowing it to be through their votes for tax cuts.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you are really serious about reform, and you applaud USPTO's rejection of this term, you must also support revoking the Microsoft trademark on "Windows".
The trademark term is "Microsoft Windows", and that's obviously permitted. Had Apple tried to get "Apple Multi-Touch" then they'd have had no problem (but it wouldn't have had the squatting-on-a-term effect that they wanted).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Apple?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
If you quietly glance out the corner of your eye, you might glimpse the most successful company in the nation floundering, losing its guts, for want of the vision of a charismatic individual.
I don't get it, is Arthur a Prior or a Priest?
Fandroids hate facts.
OMG! The USPTO actually denied something? Maybe Apple should have tried patenting multi-touch "with a computer," seeing as that phrase is the secret pass code for getting a patent on otherwise unpatentable trivialities.
When Apple released the first mobile multi-touch device. And the trademark application is restricted to mobile applications.
However, it is so basically descriptive I can see denying it. I just hope the USPTO didn't factor in the use of the term today, after Apple already made it popular. That's basically ripping off Apple's work.