Apple in 873-page legal claim to word 'Pod'
Apple really, really, really wants exclusive rights to the word “Pod,” in names for tech products, the company has argued in an 873-page legal brief filed earlier this week. Steve Jobs & Co submitted the voluminous document in a dispute with Sector Labs, a startup that's developing a projector called the Video Pod, Wired.com …
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OmniPod?
Wonder if they'll take on medical technology like OmniPod (a tubeless insulin pump). That'd be a fun showdown to watch.
This is why
there needs to be an open season on lawyers.
Great! Except...
... when you need one for driving offences, divorce settlements, false arrest, contracts with unscrupulous clients, or for defending a copyright infringement suit for using someone's IP in your website or publication.
Where is the Ouroboros icon?
Lawyers...
It is time I think to think of reasons why we have a legal system. I would have thought that the reason law exists is to protect the weak and persecuted, to ensure fair hearings and ensure wrong doers are prosecuted.
Idealistically I would think that a lawyer should strive to some sense of goodness and fairness.
If you are a true lawyer, please see this for what it is. A (very) dominant company trying to intimidate and step on so many others. To control language itself in quite a very real way.
I don't know who Apple's lawyers are but I am pretty sure they do not have conscience. If you happen to be one of them, I spit on you metaphorically. I have no respect for you. You give lawyers a bad name.
People like you make all of us out there come up with statements above. My own feeling is you should all be put out in a boat far to sea and said boat sunk.
You are indeed the lowest form of life. Mainly because you have a choice on how to wield your power and influence and you choose this.
FAIL.
No.
This is why there needs to be an intelligent evaluation of IP Law.
Leftpondian bo**cks
I can't imagine a judge in England, or France for that matter, taking any longer over this that the time it takes to laugh.
People who live in a country where this can even be taken seriously long enough to start an action need to have a word with their politicians.
However
Copyrighting the phrase "S Jobs, Steve Jobs or Steven Jobs" and then charging him $20,000 for each reference could have its merits... Maybe I could find some sleeze bag lawyer to work on percentage?
the rules...
NEW REGULATIONS FOR THE HUNTING OF LAWERS
US Government Department of Fish and "WildLife"
Sec. 1200
1. Any person with a valid hunting license may harvest attorneys.
2. Taking of attorneys with traps or deadfalls
is permitted. The use of currency as bait is prohibited.
3. Killing of attorneys with a vehicle is prohibited.
If accidentally struck, remove dead
attorney to roadside and proceed to nearest car wash.
4. It is unlawful to chase, herd, or harvest attorneys
from a snow machine, helicopter, or aircraft.
5. It shall be unlawful to shout "whiplash",
"ambulance", or "free Perrier" for the purpose of trapping attorneys.
6. It shall be unlawful to hunt attorneys within
100 yards of BMW dealerships.
7. It shall be unlawful to hunt attorneys within
200 yards of courtrooms, law libraries, whorehouses,
health spas, gay bars, ambulances, or hospitals.
8. If an attorney is elected to government
office, it shall be a felony to hunt, "entrap", or
possess it.
9. Stuffed or mounted attorneys must have a
state health department inspection for rabies, and vermin.
10. It shall be illegal for a hunter to
disguise himself as a reporter, drug dealer, pimp,
female legal clerk, sheep, accident victim,
bookie, or tax accountant for the purpose of
hunting attorneys.
Paging Mr Tracy
Those things you carry with Thunderbird 2, there's a Mr Jobs wants you to rename them.
After all, what's techier than International Rescue?
Thunderbirds are...
Weapons pod
“What I'm hoping to do with this case is to really reach a lot broader of an audience and make it so entrepreneurs and small businesses can use the English language as they see fit in branding their products”
I'm sure an Armalite 15 would reach that goal far quicker than a doing the "case" song-and-dance.
Apple
Apple would have my sympathies at all if they hadn't reneged on their promise not to use the word Apple in connection with the music industry,
Glass houses, stones, etc.
No sympathy from this corner either
Apple didn't bother to respect others product names when they released the iPhone, despite several companies having products by that name.
They didn't
The promise was not that they wouldn't use the name Apple in connection with the music industry. It was that they wouldn't use it in connection with music publishing, which they don't.
They did.
If distributing music via the internet isn't an acknowledged form of publishing, I don't know what isn't! Ever here of Web Publishing? An accepted form of free press (unless you are a blogger who keeps scooping the supposed pro's) by mass media. That has to do with words and images but we also see videos and 'pod casts' as a form of publishing. Ergo, it should be acknowledged that distributing music (or video!) is also publishing.
BTW, I wonder when the term Pod-Cast will get its day in court?
Only in this to the letter legal lawyer filled world...
would someone with a straight face try to draw a distinction between music publishing and iTunes. iTunes "Publishes" music on the Internet. Ergo, Apple used their company name to publish music. iTunes would not have taken off, Apple's iTunes was always going to take off.
100's of pod companies for apple to take a bite of
On the FIRST page of a Google search I found these businesses with "pod" in their name. They have NOTHING to do with the iPod or similar gadgets:
POD Food
The Pod Company
POD (Payable On Death, American metal band, 1992, still going)
Pod Exhibition Systems
The Pod Site
Hov Pod
Join The Pod
There must be 100's more, maybe 1000.
Apple - s*d off. Greedy corporate.
Might Don't Make Right
Might don't make right, Mr. Jobs. You already ruined the word 'apple' for me. Leave bad enough alone.
Apple in 873-page legal claim to word 'Pod'
Is "Pad" next?
Is "Pad" next?
I think Apple would have a hard time convincing anyone that word 'pad' is in anyway only attributed to them... can anyone else "think" of a product from IBM for example. :)
I'm sure
that Kotex and Stayfree will have something to say about that... However, I think they could argue that Apple have encroached on some of their service or trade marks with the release of the iPad.
pad?
That will be a sad day for feminine hygine product manufacturers . .
Apple in 873-page legal claim to word 'Pod'
Does that mean we can no longer talk of pea pods?
What about the dolphins?
Will gatherings of dolphins be forbidden?
Not the iMan behind this
It must be all the lawyers who are taking command like they tend to do when the carcase is big enough. Not much hope for a life at Apple after the iMan.
Other technical uses of pod
Escape pod, cargo pod, transporter pod (eg Space 1999), OMS Pod (Space Shuttle), POD (perl Plain Old Documentation).
Also been used to describe a workstation environment ("work pod").
If memory serves, Psion 3a datacables had a "pod" in the middle of them.
There's so much prior art that it probably took 873 pages to sufficiently define the usage Apple want to lock down so that existing usage from decades ago isn't relevant!
Pod People
Probably a good description of iFans. There are a lot of tech-related things that use 'Pod', I doubt that His Jobsiness will get exclusive use for this. I think there's even a "Virtual Pod" or something for VR games.
Why stop there?
Why can't Apple trademark vowels why they're at it? Anything "e-" or "i-" anything could get Jobs money.
Seriously... anything less than three letters which can be combined into a larger word could let Apple sue them out of existance. (Consider the Spanish infinitive "poder" and all of it's conjugations.) Unless the USPTO has a top bureaucrat under the table of the Apple Board of Directors (use any visual image you like), this won't happen at all.
Nothing to do with patents
is it? So why speak of the USPTO? You even mentioned trademarking in you first paragraph.
Prior Art anyone???
As I recall from my days play the battletech games, that there was a 'pod' in use at various VR locations across the world that you could sit in and gave you the immersed feeling of actually being inside the cockpit of a mech.
I recall they used the word pod in their name, perhaps the company that made them could remind apple that they werent the first to use the word pod in their products in the technology world & as such have no rights to stop anyone else from using it.
Or is that just too much common sense to expect from the legal profession??
Re: VWE "Battletech Pods"
Virtual Worlds Entertainment used the term "pods" in their literature for their versions of Battletech & Red Planet Mars...
(Red Planet Mars was a racing game based on a colonised Mars, delevoped by bored miners, using "kitbashed" racers, & featured "Wierd Al" Yankovich in the introductory video, as a underground race organiser).
The Tesla 2 pod system was used at the only VWE arcade that I knew of (The Trocadero Centre in Central London), though they were considering upgrading to the Tesla 3 pod system before a series of floods took it out (as well as the Alien War attraction, & the rest of the basement)...
The most notable feature of the VWE arcade, apart from the leather sofas (it was finished out as a "Victorian Gentlemen's Club" style wise) was it had a functioning bar (for a while, the only one in the Trocadero)...
Apple patents Oxford English dictionary????
I think Apple may be over-reaching a little on this!
There is prior usage of the term pod in the computer industry. Going back to 1984, HP had a calculator pod used to connect external devices. I reference http://oldcomputers.net/hp75.html for details on the HP75D.
There is also a usage in http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~glaser/documents/SSS%20terrascope.pdf
Here a 2inch by 4 inch pod is used.
Most appropriately, I believe Frederic Pohl, the famous SciFy writer, may (like Arthur Clarke with satellite TV) lay claim to conceiving the iPod. I quote "Each Heechee carries a microwave emitter in a storage pod between his or her legs. The pod is a trapezohedron shaped device and is also used for carrying equipment. The pods also explain why the seats on the ship have V-shaped indentations to accommodate the devices. " (This is from the Heechee page on Wikipedia) I think this one may go back to 1972 or earlier!
Mr Jobs may be dancing in a minefield with this idea!
Prior Art...?
[Dave Bowman] HAL, open the pod bay doors please.
[HAL9000] I'm sorry Dave but I can't do that.
And let Apple face the consequences as expensively as possible.
Censored by Jobs...
... So there I was, sitting in my bachelor p**, enjoying a juicy, shiny red a****. While I was grooving to my latest t****, along came my health-nut girlfriend, saying I should really be eating peas freshly split from the p**s. Just then, I received a p**** call from the boss at my w***place, who wanted to know why the video d** that he had asked for a client was not ready yet. I logged on to the w** and fired up my c*** client, but since my contact was not online, I sent an e-m*** instead. I got a reply while watching a m**** starring Bruce Willis on my t*, but when I clicked on the attachment i***, all I could see was a still p****graph. I double checked that there was no problem with my O*, and then I even checked the b****** disks, but no go. I then tried to take control of my office computer using r***** d******, and sy** my folders, but inspite of having it finish in real q**** t***, as well as using a t*x* ed**or to manually check the list of folders, I was not able to retrieve my wo**. After checking my ***endar, I realized there was no way I could finish up unless I used a t*** m******. I told my boss, who was wild, and booked my on a one way s***** back to b**tc**p.
(This document edited to omit possible and/or probable references to the following Apple (TM) products: iPad, Apple, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iWork, iDVD, iWeb, iChat, Apple Mail, iMovie, Apple TV, Icon Composer, iPhoto, iOS, Apple Backup, Apple Remote Desktop, iSync, QuickTime, TextEdit, iWork, iCal, TimeMachine, Safari and BootCamp. Other words and phrases may or may not belong to Apple Inc, now or in the future. Trademarks belong to original holders.).
Another company that need a kick is...
Monster, maker of vastly over priced cables who goes after anyone who uses Monster in their name.
why not?
Perhaps he should try to copyright every word in the dictionary with the letter "i" in it while he is at it.
Not anything to do with copyright either
is it? Its about Trademarks! Not patents or copyrights or prior art. Even if Apple trademark every bleedin' word and character in existence, you'll only not be allowed to start a company or sell a product with the same or similar name. You can still use the fucking words in normal speech and writing. This sort of legal action is bad enough without confusing it with other bad legal actions.
ISTR...
William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic stealing an "ipod" from an electronics workshop in the 1995 eponymous film.
I wonder how long before that Gibson had used that name in an electronics sense. Maybe in his 1981 short story of the same name?
Perhaps he should be suing Apple?
Pod
The Original receptical for Peas..
ie: 2 Peas in a Pod
A pod of Killer Whales.
Well that explains it
'Open the pod bay doors HAL'
'I'm sorry Dave, Apple wont let me do that'
JMP @ Is "Pad" next?JMB
It's already been done:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/jobs_claims_pad_trademark/
Perhaps he should take "fanboi" and be done with it. After all, it's his idiot fans that keep buying all this pod and pad rubbish.
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