Several years ago a man named Tim Langdell was able to successfully win trademarks on several rather generic terms. The terms trademarked by Langdell included "edge," "cutting edge," "the edge," and "gamer's edge." After winning those trademarks, the man said about suing any video game company that used any of those words in the title of their video games.
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‘Trademark’ Stories
USPTO shreds Edge trademarks and kills a troll
Facebook to go to trial over “Timeline” trademark
Amidst all of the good news Facebook has been throwing out, it looks like some bad news was just waiting to rain on its parade. Facebook was sued back in September 2011 by Timelines Inc. over the "timeline" trademark. Timelines Inc., which launched its website in 2009, claimed that Facebook infringed on its trademark when the social network roll out its timeline feature to its user base.
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No Joke: Apple must resubmit “iPad mini” trademark application
This week the folks at the United States Patent and Trademark Office have denied Apple's first application for trademarking the term "iPad mini". As it's noted in the letter that was originally sent out back near the end of January, made public this week, the USPTO has re-stated that the "i" as well as the "Pad" bits of the application are fine, while the "mini" bit of the show needs to be a bit more descriptive. And the April Fools Jokes commence.
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Livescribe and Sky settle trademark spat with rebranded WiFi pen
Livescribe and BSkyB have settled their differences in Europe, after the satellite telecoms company took issue with the name of the Sky WiFi smartpen launched last year. British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSkyB) had filed a trademark complaint about the wirelessly-enabled notetaking system - which we reviewed back in October - forcing Livescribe to pull it from shelves while the two companies argued. Now, the case has been settled, but only with Livescribe agreeing to rebrand the pen itself.
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Apple will appeal iPhone Brazil trademark loss
Apple will appeal its lost rights to the "iphone" trademark in Brazil, it's been confirmed, though local firm Gradiente must first prove it has used the term else see its fight with the Cupertino firm scuppered. The Brazilian copyright regulator ruled in favor of Gradiente Eletronica SA earlier this week, after the company pointed out it had filed a request to use the all-lowercase "iphone" name back in 2000; however, approval was only given in 2008, and, Reuters reports, Gradiente must now demonstrate it made use of the name within five years of that point.
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Apple Store design and layout granted official US trademark
If you were planning on opening a store selling your brand new computer brand with a setup that's not unlike the Apple Store, you'll probably want to re-think your strategy starting this week. Apple has officially been granted a trademark protecting their retail store design and layout by the US Patent & Trademark Office this week. The original trademark request application was made all the way back in May of 2010, so whatever you remember about the store design back then that's survived until now you'll want to avoid when knocking out your own store in the future.
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Brazilian brand releases “iphone” with Android
If the people responsible for naming the device revealed this week in Brazil are either majorly daring as a way of business life, or they're simply unaware of what's about to happen to them: the Gradiente iphone Neo One is now official. This is the first device that the Brazilian company has made with the "iphone" trademarked word in the title but their involvement with the world goes back several years. The last time we heard from Gratiente, they'd won exclusive rights for the word "IPHONE" in Brazil, this just one year after Apple started offering the original iPhone in the country in 2007.
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Apple’s “Steve Jobs” multitouch patent may be invalid
Apple's '949 multi-touch patent, more commonly referred to as the "Steve Jobs patent," has been used in many patent lawsuits against various companies. Now it looks like karma may be taking a bite out of Apple, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office stating, tentatively, that it is not valid. As reported by FOSS Patents, the Patent and Trademark Office issued a first Office action, the second one in less than 8 weeks.
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Apple had to go through Harley-Davidson for Lightning trademark
In today's installment of "words you didn't know could be trademarked," we'll focus in on Apple and its relationship with a motorcycle manufacturer by the name of Harley-Davidson. Apple's "Lightning" branding for its new dock connector certainly plays nice with the company's "Thunderbolt" branding, but in new EU Trademark filings discovered by Patently Apple, we're finding out that the iPod maker had to talk to Harley-Davidson before it could use the word lightning for its products. That's because Harley-Davidson owns the trademark for lightning in a lot of different areas, including motorcycle parts, video games, and even glasses.
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Tolkien estate sues over The Lord of the Rings slot machines
If you're a fan of the movies in The Lord of the Rings franchise or the original Tolkien books you might be interested in this report. The estate of the late author has sued Warner Bros. alleging that the movie company is overstepping its rights when it comes to merchandising The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien estate is upset over virtual goods.
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Microsoft officially leaving Windows 8 Metro brand in the dust
Microsoft confirmed today that it will indeed be ditching the Metro branding for Windows 8, and said it plans to introduce a new brand sometime later this week. We had a feeling that something like this was going to happen, thanks to this week's leak of internal Microsoft memos which signaled such a change. Apparently, Microsoft's decision to dump the branding comes from talks with "an important European partner" that left the company without much choice in the matter. To put it simply, Microsoft probably picked the term "Metro" without realizing that one its partners already held the trademark.
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Apple sued in China over Snow Leopard trademark
Apple finally settled the iPad trademark case in mainland China, paying Proview $60 million to put the issue to rest. Now it looks like Cupertino will be coming under fire from another target: a Chinese chemical company is suing Apple over a Snow Leopard trademark. Jiangsu Xuebao claims to have filed the electrical equipment trademark protection back in 2000.
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