Now Apple opens fire on EPAD trademark in China Apple has filed an official complaint over an application for the EPAD trademark by Guangzhou-based computer kit maker ebox. The peripheral biz applied for the EPAD trademark in August 2010 and about a year later passed the first stage of approval by China’s Trademark Office, according to a report on Sina Tech. Apple filed its …
Return of the 10,000 character post on El Reg , this will just go...
On and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on......
No-one seems to care that Lenovo has been selling LePad for ages either, maybeLenovo has more muscle that Apple.
Personally, when I hear the "i" anything trade mark I inwardly Barf.
If I won any "i" anything in a competition I would publicly stomp it into pieces.
Why ?
I am sick and tired of the hype on this stuff. What I use is for it's technical merit, and not it's bling appeal or hyped up consumerism driven stereotyping.
This is China, go watch the episode of Top Gear when they were in China to figure out the odds of Apple winning this one. A car looking exactly like a BMW, BMW went to the courts and the courts say "nope, looks nothing like the BMW!" even though it was a carbon copy.
Gotta love the Chinese though, any country which puts 2 fingers up at Apple and says "get stuffed" is okay in my book.
I love this. The iPad in China is a PC that looks like a iMac, but is not made by Apple. So Apple is complaining that their EPAD is infringing on another companies Trademark in China?
I am glad they have 97 billion in the bank. They will need it for the legal bills. Next they will be going after Issac Asimov's estate for I Robot.
So they object to ePad which is different to iPad but "similar", because "iPad is such a well-known brand"?
If it's so well known (and it's hard to argue otherwise), then surely there could be no confusion amongst the target audience unless a product marketed under the ePad name were to have the same appearance and smug marketing gimmick as the iPad?
Or am I being overly simplistic here?
It is going to be trapezoidal in shape, have a reverse-trapezoidal bezel surround and Instead of icons, there will be words to be touched (sort of a touch-screen version of the old AT&T 3B1 "User Agent") to activate programs written in Perl/Tk, I'll call it the yLilyPad (because 'y' it exists is beyond me).
Probably get sued anyway.
Serta Mattress makes a line of mattresses called "iSleep" so I expect they will be hearing from fruity lawyers.
Is the 'I' the issue, or is it the 'Pad' bit? Or the font? I mean Lenovo (and I*BM before them) make ThinkPads, and ASUS makes eeepads, and they don't have a lawsuit <currently>.
If ebox would change the appearance, would that mollify Apple? Maybe not. If they change the name to l (that's a lower case 'L', not a capital 'i')Fub with a font similar to Apple's, what would happen? Another trademark case, most likely.
I can understand that some company might want to tie in with another companies success and copy the looks, but what customer would believe that an IPad sleeve that he bought off a market stall for 8 bucks is actually a genuine Apple accessory?
I dislike Apple's attitude as much as the next man, to the point that I have, about 10 years ago, promised myself never to buy anything from them.
But if their only point of distinction is their trademark (it's not price, quality, creativity, or prominence is it?), then I can understand that they have to defend it with all their might; so I can understand what they do. It's a fashion fight. Paris would agree.
* An 'I', how cheeky of them.
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