Upsetting the Apple Cart
The long-running legal tussle between The Beatles’ company, Apple Corp, and technology giant Apple Computer returned to London’s High Court on Wednesday – this time, focused on the latter’s move into music services through its iPod player and iTunes download system.
Apple Corp is accusing the US company of breaching a trademark agreement, by effectively “selling music” through its online music store and using the Apple name and logo in connection with this.
In Penny Lane, the barber shaves another customer and the little children laugh at him behind his back.
Fun | tree hugging sister | 
March 29, 2006 1:53 pm
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It’s so idiotic. Greedy greedy greedy idjits.
No one confuses apple computer with apple music.
Apple will lose, big time. They have the worst lawyers in the world.
Heck, they even lost to Microsoft years ago, and that was Pandora’s box for some of the biggest horrors in computer operating systems ever.
Yeah, their record is not too great.
This trademark/copyright stuff is getting insane; I read somewhere that marvel and dc comics are trying to copyright the term ‘super-hero’?
Dang. There goes my iPod.
Isn’t Microsoft still a majority shareholder in Apple? I would think that, if it were in their interests, their lawyers would bleed over.
Gotta beg to differ, Bingley, but if Apple is moving into music, there is definitely a potential for trademark confusion and therefore infringement. Before, you would have been right but for the same (largely) type of product it sounds like a valid argument for the Brit Apple.
It seems to me, though, that there is a simple solution – Merkin Apple just markets their stuff under Mackintosh. At least, until they start selling raincoats…
Microsloth was never a majority share holder in Apple stock.
Here’s how it worked, and it’s rarely portrayed this way.
Microsloth was sued by Apple for infringing on a patent of some sort, I can’t remember what.
After years of legal wrangling, Apple and Microsloth settled. The agreement was that Microsloth was allowed to use the intellectual property that it admitted wrongfully using. Microsloth agreed to pay a huge sum of cash to Apple. Microsloth agreed to make MS Office for Mac for a number of years (they had threatened to stop making it previously). Microsloth agreed to invest in a large number of non-voting Apple stock.
Yet people always report it as if Apple lost a law suit and Microsloth had a controlling interest in the company.
I’m sure I have a few small details wrong. I vaguely remember Apple had to do something in return beyond letting MS off the hook for infringing on their intellectual property.
That was the whole thing when Steve Jobs announced M$ was investing in them and Bill Gates appeared on that giant screen at their stockholder’s meeting and everyone booed, etc?
Even if its non-voting stock, they have a fiscal interest in Apple’s well being.
Yes, that was the purpose, to encourage them not to destroy Apple. As I recall, the time period for that investment has long since passed.
Actually ken, they can’t use that name either, as they were sued by a high-end stereo maker of that name when the mac was introduced in 1984!
Can they not, Bing? The audio company is McIntosh. Is the “Mac” with the small “i” enough of a distinction?
Oh, drat, you’re right cullen; that was the compant that sued them.
Am I homonymophobic now?
Gosh, what’s this key next to ‘t’? A ‘y’…useful.
Mackintosh vs. McIntosh – unfortunately, that may not be enough of a distinction (and I didn’t know about the stereo lawsuit before). It all comes down to the lawyers. McDonald’s successfully forced a Santa Cruz vegetarian fast food place to stop using the name McDharma’s – as if ANYONE could possibly confuse the two. McDharma’s dropped the “Mc” from the name (although, last I saw the place several years ago, they did this on their sign out front by simply putting a red circle-and-slash through the “Mc” – more power to ’em!)
I wonder if budling the Macintosh name with the Apple logo would be enough to satisfy the UK Apple complaint and any possible McIntosh complaint? Should prove interesting how they overcome this.