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Apple and Other Tech Companies Have Registered Their IP in Jamaica, Tonga, and Elsewhere For Years (qz.com)

Posted by msmash on from the stranger-things dept.

Apple's product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica. From a Quartz report: It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle. These include Jamaica, Tonga, Iceland, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago -- places where trademark authorities don't maintain easily searchable databases. The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.

6 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. outrage! by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If companies want to keep their product secret until a big announcement, I don't have a problem with that.
    If this is the legal trick they use to accomplish that, then again, there is no problem.

    As long as they aren't using it to push around little people, or extort others, then it's an interesting trick, but nothing to get worried about.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re: outrage! by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Informative

      Please note: this is a trademark issue, not a patent issue. If a business fails because it can't get a specific trademark, it probably wasn't much of a business to begin with.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re: outrage! by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      It's only news because it's something interesting that large companies are doing. Those kinds of things are worth knowing about, especially for those of us who can benefit from knowing weird things related to our industry.

      On the other hand, if you want to read things to feel outrage, then yeah, it's completely useless. Go read naturalnews.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re: outrage! by nedlohs · · Score: 2

      Except for the obvious fact that trademarks and patents are not the in anyway the same thing.

  2. Re:Why is this a problem? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

    Apple is a worldwide company, why the US filing must be the first one?

    Because Patriarchy, or White Privilege, or {insert current anti-corporation SJW jargon here}! Maybe it's because a lot of people here dislike the USPTO (myself included), but agreed. Of all of the slimy, unethical things a lot of corporations do, this isn't one of them.

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  3. Was this meant to inspire outrage? by maliqua · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it was meant to inspire outrage it failed. this is just nonsense news. It is mildly interesting and if it had been portrayed in a "FYI This is a clever trick some big companies are using that hurts no one, if anything it creates a small amount of jobs in some poor countries, without taking anything away from the USA" it would have been a quality article