Apple has been denied the “multi-touch” trademark, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) deciding that it had already become generic in its usage. Although Apple attempted to trademark the term on the same day that the original iPhone was launched, January 9, 2007, the initial registration was rejected; Apple’s appeal has similarly been denied, with the USPTO saying that “the examining attorney was not persuaded by applicant’s showing of acquired distinctiveness.”
So there's this guy by the name of Notch, aka Markus "Notch" Persson, he's one of the original creators of the massively popular game Minecraft. Notch's developer group Mojang is currently in a trademark dispute with another group of developers by the name of Bethesda Softworks. The latter has threatened to sue the former because Mojang's new game by the name of "Scrolls" apparently doesn't seem far enough away from Bethesda's "The Elder Scrolls," a trademarked name they currently own. What Notch of Mojang here is suggesting is that a team of his best "warriors" and a team of Bethesda's best "warriors" go head to head in the first-person-shooter game Quake 3, the winner dropping their side of the dispute.
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The busiest people in the Apple corporate structure have to be the legal team. These guys and gals are constantly fighting off suits and filing suits for one reason or another. The legal team at Apple only recently settled with Nokia for patent infringement and now another suit has been filed against the corporation. A publisher in New York filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple this week. The publisher is John T. Colby.
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Apple and Amazon have been sparring over the "App Store" trademark since March when Amazon's Appstore launched to sell Android apps. Apple sued Amazon for trademark infringement while Amazon countered that the name "app store" was too generic.
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Apple's no stranger to trademark suits. We can certainly recall the Cisco trademark of the iPhone and the Fujitsu's trademark of the iPad. And now it looks like Apple is at it again, strong-arming its way into getting the name it wants even if that means getting sued. A company by the name iCloud Communications, LLC has just filed a trademark infringement suit against Apple for using the name iCloud and offering almost the same type of services.
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We all know that Sony is hard at work on a new portable game console to replace the PSP that hasn't sold well. The code name for the new console was NGP and the device is expected to get official for the first time at E3 this week. I mentioned last week that the source code on the PlayStation site had listed a couple occurrences of the PS Vita name, which is thought to be the official name for the NGP when it lands.
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With the success of the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer, the Taiwanese company is getting quite a lot of attention and excitement going for its next crop of mobile devices. For the upcoming Computex 2011 trade show, ASUS released a few teaser images to have us guessing. One of the images suggests a tablet and phone combo, and today we learn that it may be called the "Padfone."
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Amazon has joined Microsoft in calling for Apple's App Store trademark to be rejected, arguing that "because 'app store' is a generic term, and Amazon's use of the term causes no likelihood of confusion, dilution, 19 or unfair competition" the Apple legal case against them should be dropped. Like Microsoft, Amazon's argument is that Apple's own CEO, Steve Jobs, referred to generic "app stores" in the company's financial results call back in October 2010.
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The ongoing App Store trademark saga took a bizarre turn this week, with Microsoft demanding Apple's recent motion to dismiss the case be rejected because the company's lawyers used a tiny font. "Apple's response brief is 31 pages, including the table of contents and table of authorities, and on information and belief, is printed in less than 11 point font" the complaint suggests.
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Looks like the HTC EVO View 4G really is incoming at CTIA 2011 next month, with HTC filing a couple of trademark applications for the mysterious new device. Good and EVO spotted the listings - here and here - which confirm both the name and the 4G connectivity; we still don't know, however, whether the device is a smartphone or a tablet.
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With only hours to go until the launch of the iPad 2 and what's expected to be a demo of iOS 5.0, an Apple trademark submission has been spotted for what looks like a social messaging or online chat service. Filed on February 23, the "stylized speech bubbles" are in fact referenced in four separate submissions - 85249977, 85249986, 85250000 and 85250006 - with various classifications including "online social networking services."
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Apple has struck back at Microsoft's attempts to have the term "App Store" deemed generic, suggesting that its arch-rival's own battle to preserve the "Windows" trademark is the perfect example of why it should be allowed to retain the term. "Having itself faced a decades-long genericness challenge to its claimed WINDOWS mark," Apple said in a filing submitted earlier this week, "Microsoft should be well aware that the focus in evaluating genericness is on the mark as a whole and requires a fact-intensive assessment of the primary significance of the term to a substantial majority of the relevant public."
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