Cupertino lawyers mull 'driPhone' name ban The AppleTM branding police have swooped on a fledgling New Zealand based mobile phone accessory entrepreneur in a row that may yet end up in court. At issue is whether using the "eye" phoneme in a product brand is allowable when the product in question is a third-party iPhoneTM accessory. Fairfax reports that AppleTM has …
@local group I guess 500 or so years should be enough to give prior art
I wonder if he changes it to dryphone will they still claim it sounds the same as driphone
How about he changes the 'i' to a capital. All Apples 'i' products are in the lower case......actually that gives me an idea, why not bring out a range of products called Ipad, Iphone, with the 'I' in times roman, and if apple complain I can just claim its actually a roman numeral, and it is in fact a 'one'pad :)
You forgot to make your statement look lke ths:
"So fnally '*' must be removed from all words, for fear of beng prosecuted by these people. The alphabet s now down to four vowels unless you are wllng to pay a lcence fee for ts use.
Next week the sound 'eye' wll also be copyrght."
hehehehe
This post has been deleted by its author
I have an i Phone, it's a usb connected handset for VOIP I bought years ago in the days when Apple just made over-priced computers for technophobes.
On the front it's labelled as "i phone" on the back "i Phone" does the lack of a space between i and P mean Apple hasn't infringed the "prior art"?
Anyone want to buy it to use in a case against Apple?
then bought by Cisco who managed to cock up the legal case as they couldn't prove continued use of the name so Apple won the right to use it.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/cisco-lost-rights-to-iphone-trademark-last-year-experts-say/236
They later settled so Apple now legally own it.
«Apple'sTM letter, dated December 23, requested an additional month for a team of [gimlet-eyed lizards - sorry, unable to reproduce the cross-out MHD] lawyers to [squeeze the last possible billable hour out of a trivial sideshow] decide whether the company will lodge an objection.» Lawyers are what lawyers are - nothing new here - and Apple is what Apple is (has become) - a blight on and hinder for all innovation that the firm doesn't control...
Henri
What would be funny is if the writers of the film 2001 A Space Odyssey I think it was sued Apple for copying something they had in the film aka apparently from what I have, been told there was a section where the pilot's of a space ship we using something that looked like a Ipad when the film was released, well before the Ipad ever came in to existence.
This whole thing with Apple and sueing companies for thing's like this are a joke.
I just hope that someone one day takes Apple to the cleaners.
I won't buy anything that is developed by Apple or that has the Apple name on it now on the basis that they are sueing everyone over everything they possibly can.
but iWill take this opportunity to state that iShall never buy an Apple product, will do everything iCan to avoid using any of their software, and will jump on every chance to diss their products and denigrate the people who do buy them.
So, iApple can iKiss my iBig iFat iArse
Not that anyone gives an iRats iArse what iThink. ;-)
I wonder if Apple would have objected were it not for the fact that this company also make "driPhone" cases for Android phones? I can think of a few iPhone accessories that use "i" in their name without any legal problems (e.g. iTrip), so I suspect the real issue here is the association of the "iPhone" name with Android.
Maybe Apple are concerned about iPhone becoming a generic catch-all name, like Hoover is to vacuum cleaners or Nintendo was to video-games?
Then even changing it to "dryPhone" would not be enough? Madness. I can see _some_ logic in being annoyed by all these iXXX gadgets which are clearly trading on apple's name and could hurt their reputation, but a clever-sounding product rather than a derivative copy is different. More a parody.
No more of 'those' triangles they will now be called crapple-sosceles triangles, at least several other countries will be in danger, e.g. crapple-celand, crapple-ran should join crapple-raq, the crapple-sland off the south coast of England might have to worry. Then there is the interior finish using plasterboard sheets, 'was wet-once-walling' might catch on, perhaps not! Frozen carbon dioxide could become an issue and forget getting your clothes cleaned at the *** cleaners.
Perhaps everyone in the world should start a suggestion that they have an 'i' something they want to use and drive crapple's legal department where it needs to go, anywhere out of the way.
am eye to assume that apple excluseyevely owns all references to anytheyeng that contaeyens a lower case "eye" (i) (* TM, SM, Copyreyeght, R and PDQ of Apple). Personally eye am appalled at theeyr behaveyeor and they should be chasteyezed for assumeyeng excluseyeve ownersheyep of a lower case eye, that prefaces a seyemple noun.
The fact their whole trademark makes up part of this guys product name is probably why they have the arse, it's not just the use of "i" it's "iPhone".
If I brought out a hot cocoa based beverage and called it Cococa-cola I would expect a letter from the lawyers.
Still, Apple love trying to sue everyone for anything so fuck em, I hope they get pwned by the small guy.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
