DryPhone
So why not call it DryPhone then?
New Zealand inventor Hayden Crowther has done something Samsung hasn't been able to achieve: comprehensively smack down Apple in court. Apple's beef with Kiwi Crowther centres on the waterproof phone cases he markets under the name “driPhone”. Crowther tried to trademark that name, but Cupertino took exception claiming it “ …
"So why not call it DryPhone then?"
Or a DRIPhone.
or a DrIpHoNe.
Or George.
Because the inventor called it Driphone, and Apple threw a hissy fit. And it seems.. lost the case. Perhaps Apple should have bought a more distinctive product name.
And are you sure there is not already a trademark for DryPhone.
Not that anybody will need one anyway.. Aren't iPhones waterproof now with a firmware upgrade?
New Zealand also had a device called the "iPhone" on sale in the 1990s, long before Apple even got into the telephony market.
That was a nasty piece of consumer tat along the same lines as the Amstrad Em@iler thingy (only buggier and was eventually the result of a forced product recall about 2001), but its existance made it difficult for Apple to trademark the name when their new devices went on the market in NZ.
I'm a Kiwi and I laud the common sense.
However NZ is a tiny country and it is not worth developing a product for NZ markets alone. If the product is even marginally successful, just about everything will be exported and he's going to have to win this battle in the importing countries.
It is the same as the battle for software patents. NZ might have made software patents obsolete, but most NZ software gets exported and that means the software is still effectively bound by US/whatever patent law even if it is being developed in NZ.
"... has the scalp of Apple's lawyer to hang on his virtual mantlepiece."
If only it really worked that way. Perhaps we could have the court decree printed on a lawyer skin and framed so it could be passed down for generations.
"Yes son, that's the hide of a billion dollar globocorp lackey that your great grandfather took down in hand to juris combat."
The trademark system basically requires a trademark owner to actively defend their trademark or lose it altogether. So if someone came up with "iiPhone" Apple would have to sue or risk losing exclusive rights to "iPhone". Same with "Experier" vs Sony's "Xperia", etc, etc. The trademark authorities themselves will not protect your trademark for you except in obvious cases of direct copying.
So the problem is that you have to be "seen" to be defending your trademark, or else you'll lose it. The common sense thing for Apple to have done would have been to write a letter saying that they don't mind DRIPHONE, that they recognise that they're selling waterproof cases and that there's no real conflict of business interests. However, that's not public enough to be "seen" to be defending "iPhone". And without that someone would be able to argue that Apple didn't care and that they should be allowed "iiPhone" as a trademark.
It would be far better if the system allowed trademark owners to officially lodge letters of consent ("Dear DRIPHONE, we're cool with your company name coz you're selling cases, please don't make an actual phone otherwise I'll get angry, lots, Tim Cook") as official evidence of actively defending a trademark. That would be better for everyone.
Having said that, Apple do seem to have been needlessly paranoid in this case. I guess we all would be too if we stood to lose $billions of business if we lost control of a trademark and risked being personally sued by the shareholders for being so careless.
> ...if the system allowed trademark owners to officially lodge letters of consent ("Dear DRIPHONE, we're cool with your company name coz you're selling cases, please don't make an actual phone otherwise I'll get angry, lots, Tim Cook")
It's been a long time, but isn't this basically what happened in the settlement between Apple Corp and Apple Computer?
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OK, no, not exactly. Apple Computer settled with Apple Corp in 1981, and the former undertook not to enter the music business (and the Beatles undertook not to write software, snort). The whole thing appears to have been settled in 2007, with Apple Inc. buying out Apple Corps trademarks. Ah, well, it must have paid the school fees for a whole generation of lawyer's offspring...
'Why not dryPhone?'
Cos it potentially its to descriptive,
You can't trademark common words that closely
And the 'yp' are beneath the baseline and harder for printing when limited for space on product etc.
So that's y the y became an I and made dri, the p became capitial for the same reason and also stopped it from being so easily read as 'drip hone'
Well that was my reasons and thoughts at the time anyway