here it comes
Cue the Euros blasting 300 million+ Americans because of the actions of a few douchebag %1ers for a company that pays as much tax in Ireland as in the US.
Apple is attempting to gain a trademark on the word "startup", and may gain exclusive use of the word in Australia next week. Apple has also applied for a trademark on "startup" in the USA, but the Australian application offers lots more detail. The Australian page, hosted by the nation's overseer of patents and trademarks IP …
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Startup is a world colloquialism used in conjunction with new business?
1984
'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.'
Are they the New Big Brother?
well Apple already started with the letter "i" in front of anyname.
Well, at least there is prior art there...
You are bloody kidding right? What next, filing on the word THE?
That's what I thought, in which case the group "The the" is clearly double dipping :). I'm not too hot on trademark law, but as far as I know a generic term cannot be trademarked. The variable aka fly in the ointment is that it may be possible to trademark a logo with the name, and so create a backdoor by which to grab the name anyway, but I wish Apple luck if they want to enforce that. It will only take a couple of court cases before the scale of the problem becomes apparent.
Anyone more up to date in trademark laws? It strikes me as weird.
As a not entirely unrelated side note, it also *seriously* pisses me off that Apple is again messing around with legal stupidity instead of doing something interesting. Did innovation get buried alongside Jobs?
For the trademark it is not all things but specific to their industry, although each country would have limits on how many things even within the industry it applies too. "Windows" is a case in point, try using that common generic term inside the computer industry for branding. But you can use "windows" for anything else, such as a purveyor of windows could use the name windows in their brand without violating the MS trademark. So "startup" would never apply to the casual use of "startup" but specifically to product branding and only specifically for those areas of the computer industry it was approved. Other than that, branding "startup" is lame besides would they actually service other computers, sounds a bit desperate to me.
Didn't Microsoft end up paying a nice dollop of money to make the whole "Lindows" thing go away?
Now calling your product "Microsoft Windows" would probably be asking for it. However, an innovative new social networking mumbo-jumbo-buzzword something-or-other called "Windows on the World" or similar.. that might just work.
Being a trademark, you *can* use a generic word in a commercial context, more precisely in the commercial context listed in the application. There is still a difference between the "TM" and the "(R)", the latter must be a non-generic name (or something), while the former allows you to grunt in the direction of competitors but may not necessarily preclude them from using the same term.
Better ask Groklaw.... oh wait.
@Destroy all monsters....
Go the the back of the line.
When talking about the Clickbait (TM) Three(TM) i.e. Apple, Microsoft, Google, it is, under Artcile one, Subsection b2 of the Reg Forum's that, and I quote "It is against the spirit of the forum to point out facts that can be proven by a legitimate source, unless said source is another forum, Yahoo answers or social media, in which case these can be accepted as truths, even if clearly written by an obsessive 12 year old"
Intellectual property fights always struck me as the last refuge of the incompetent. Is Apple so afraid of losing it that they have to trademark common-use verbs and nouns to get an edge.
Next we'll see patents for "The Hand" as in its use to hold a phone!
Let's get back on the PRODUCT innovation track.
I hope the Aussies give them a right bollocking and ask for back taxes instead. Perhaps the only value of creating a trademark in this situation is that it establishes that you are doing business in the country where you applied for it...so taxes are due!
Just to bring Syria and Apple together, the Australians have proven themselves, over and over, to be a bunch of whores. Don't expect much.....
Obligatory link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-syria-crisis-australia-idUSBRE97R03O20130828 ("Australia backs action against Syria, with or without U.N. approval") Democracy, eh? Wunnerful stuff.
As an Aussie can i first say,
We prefer the term "Gigalo" or "Call Girl"
as to your spurious claims about our democratic process..?
If all you have is the option of turd 1 or turd 2, voting is a little less effective.
2ndly, we are poor working girls/boys surrounded by large nations and sitting on the resource treasure chest of Asia...
So excuse us if we have to pay for protection by "standing with our allies" (while not promising any actual military support)
secondly, In australia we ended up throwing out apple's case v samsung whereas other "noted" democratic strongholds (haha) such as the U.S. upheld such ridiculousness.
It has nothing to do with competence, or lack thereof, it has 100% to do with being a dick.
Some people believe that if a law exists it is not only their right, but their duty, to use it/exploit it: After all what's the point in having all these laws if you don't use them to your benefit.
Personally, I don't buy into that philosophy. That shitty anti-social attitude is directly responsible for laws that get made to fix one problem and cause 17 new problems. As with so many things in life, a few cock goblins ruin it for everybody else.
Don't they hold the patent for using oxygen in a process to release energy? I'm pretty sure the filing includes the by product of CO2 being expelled. There must be someone in the Apple legal team getting off by how much ludicrous crap he get patented. He's the dog's bollocks at what he does!
there are 88,100,000 hits for this new Apple word "startup", one of which was this Wikipedia entry.
I'm patenting the use of metal in any form, and I will trademark the word "Smartphone". With these idiot drones approving all these stupid requests, I think I stand a good chance. Even the "Toilet Snorkel" (Look it up) is more innovative than Apples (or any other trolls) claims.
Hahahahahaha, suckers. Good luck with all that with my trademarks covering intellectual property or all types, namely "trademark", "patent" and "copyright". My end run will be complete once my trademark for "intellectual property" comes through.
Who to sue first? Might as well go in alphabetical order and start with "A".
Oddly enough, registering your toilet snorkel brand as "Smartphone brand toilet snorkels" is a perfectly legitimate (mis)use of trademark within the toilet or toilet snorkeling markets and applications.
Trademarks are use case specific. The final decision will be made by an actual Human, who may or may not grant that specific use of a term depending on how stupid or or oblivious they are.
Its all gotten rather silly.
How innovative! Apple has done it again!
The experience of their new word is seamless and fluid. The perfect balance between two root words allows focus on what really matters. This is the market dominating word that we all are about to find we cannot live without.
Haters will always hate, but clearly Apple's new word has set the gold standard yet again.
I'm going to patent 'The use of a generic word, phrase, or name for.the purpose of product or service naming or identification or branding, including the use of one or more words abbreviated, reduced, reversed, or converted into an anagram such as it/they may be joined together, preceeded by, or folllowed by, with or without any form of punctuation mark..
just going to file that and get the lawyers on the phone.
I'm also going to patent 'The use of fruit to name a company, product, or service.'
They should do a work exchange with people from the US. Our tax code is so complex that entire departments within the IRS can't reach a consensus on what their portion of the tax code means. They just default to pay more of you're middle class, pay less if you're rich and let the poor sort it out.
Yes, Apple and Windows are trademarks. But they are company names and not trademarked based on Fruit or those sheets of glass that allow light to enter your room.
Startup, however is being trademarked under many sweeping computer based terms, and the problem with this is that startup is already a term in the computer world. You'll notice a startup folder in your windows start menu. If you open a run prompt in windows and type MSconfig you can control what starts up when you boot windows using the startup tab.
If we are into the banality of US business employing more lawyers than engineers look no further tham MacDonalds. Its TM, there is a small issue in Scotland where there are thousands of MacDonalds with lineage longer than a burger recipe who cannot legally call their busines after their longstanding family name for fear of being prosecuted for 'passing themselves off' as being associated with a burger chain. The thin end of the wedge has just been inserted
You're comparing coporate names to product names. Apple if awarded the TM on startup could not sue for the use of the name and win against a non-computer branded product for which their TM will probably only cover specific computer usage. Windows is a case in point, there are plenty of companies that use Windows in their branded product name and cannot be sued for it. Using MacDonalds is no different than say "Wendy's", a well known burger chain. It's like pizza, there must be 1000 variations of business names with pizza in them, there's nothing stopping someone from naming their company MacDonald's Tires. TM's usually only exist within a specific industry. McDonalds has only litigated within their specific industry that I can tell.
"Startup" to me suggests a guy with an app, no revenue and no plan. If you start a business, call it business; if you have an app just say so. If all you're interested in is "starting" and you don't know where to go there are other words you can use.
I'm happy for Apple to block this word.
"Startup"? To me this strictly means, you know, starting up my computer (or of course a tech startup which is an actually new company). Talking about it in the context of a store name to me sounds like the same kind of nonsense as people saying they made their computer "bigger" if they added some RAM or HD space to it.
Some people say that corporations like Apple, innovate; nonsense, only genuine living beings can innovate, not these slave brands. Apple is not just a facade for bullies, but a facade for slavers of ideas, language, and people. Apple does nothing, it is a facade, a fiction; only living beings, physical things, and energy do stuff.
Only physical stuff, and stored energy, can honestly be owned, although slavery was supposed to have been abolished (was it really?); claims on ideas and language (including DNA) is toxic sophistry, so should be laughed at, not backed by legal thugs!
Attempts to increasingly centralise control of resources and people concentrates risk, and amplifies exponentially the size and probability of "Black Swan" catastrophic failures; stop it, or we eventually get Depressions and wars; 2007/2008 was just a tremor, worse to come!