Apple, Startup Go To Trial Over 'Pod' Trademark 401
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "Apple is scheduled to go to trial with a startup to fight over a three-letter word: Pod. The trademark battle centers on independent entrepreneur Daniel Kokin, founder of startup Sector Labs, and his video projector in development called Video Pod. Apple had previously filed oppositions against Kokin's usage of 'Pod,' alleging that it would cause customers to confuse it with Apple's iPod products. ... Names that have come under fire include MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow, and even Podium. Sector Labs is the only company to go to trial with Apple over using the 'Pod' branding. Ana Christian, Kokin's lawyer, says the fight is about more than allowing small businesses to use 'Pod' in their product names. She noted a trend in the tech industry, in which large corporations have been attempting to assume ownership of ordinary words."
The Law (Score:5, Informative)
And the test
Don't forget that the whole point of the thing is consumer protection - your average person being able to buy a thing with a reasonable sureness about its origins. As in all things tech related the mom-test is probably best: If your mom was out shopping and found a VideoPod on the shelves would she assume it was an Apple product and make her purchasing choice accordingly.
Re:Will apple sue apple picking places with apple (Score:3, Informative)
Dont laugh, Apple has already tried and lost ie stop a supermaket selling vegetables using an apple shaped logo.
Not the intent.... (Score:5, Informative)
The scenario that trademark law was designed to prevent is people walking into a store and walking out with a product that isn't what they expected. In none of these cases were people expecting to get an iPod and ended up not getting one.
Re:What a typical waste (Score:3, Informative)
When you're aware of a trademark issue you have to defend it or you loose it.
No, you don't. [techdirt.com]
Re:What a typical waste (Score:5, Informative)
Irrelevant if Apple was the one to trademark 'iPod' with their media player, and they made it a common household name. Showing a reference to a word in a dictionary isn't going to get this start-up anywhere either. No one said that using the word 'pod' is a trademark violation, and it doesn't meet the definition of a trademark infringement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement [wikipedia.org]
The fact that they have a media projector called a 'Video Pod' makes the case relevant as it takes on a whole new meaning.
Re:The Law (Score:3, Informative)
That's a lot of money Apple has been throwing into making the public familiar with the "pod" brand, even if we only assume a small portion of it was going specifically into the iPod range. Apple has spent over a billion dollars over that three year period selling people an idea about what Apple products are, and more importantly, linking the idea of Apple products to a specific naming convention - the "i" and the "pod". Does that stand up to the requirements of the law? The court will decide after a lot of appeals I'm sure. More importantly, is it a fair question to ask? Most certainly yes.
Re:TLT (The Lawyer Tax) (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. Steve honestly had no choice in this. His hands are tied by the BoD and the Shareholders, for which (wait for it...) the lawyers define the operating guidelines and goals.
Re:Don't blame Apple... (Score:2, Informative)
If you group those as a trend, then it's a very long trend, stretching all the way back to the '30s... In any case, no one can take ownership of an ordinary word. One of the conditions for registering a trademark is that it is distinctive (see trademark distinctiveness [wikipedia.org]).
Regarding Scotch tape and Q-tip (and others, like band-aid), they were surely distinctive when originally created (ok, "scotch" is a dubious one), but have seen been widely adopted as a generic name for those products, and are likely subject to being challenged in court, just like aspirin was (aspirin is no longer a Bayer trademark, but instead a generic name for acetylsalicylic acid).
Re:What a typical waste (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. If you try to trademark something within the same industry (i.e. as a competitor) and with a name that either conflicts with or at least threatens to dilute your market image through confusing similarities, that's a viable trademark dispute. It's one of the very basic guidelines you have to read up on when figuring out whether or not you have a chance of getting a trademark; it helps to evaluate incidents of prior art. Someone marketing a media device called a Video Pod in the same market sector as Apple's media device, the iPod, looks a lot like trademark dilution to me. You may not like Apple, but they've got grounds to argue here.
What about the online grocery store? Peapod. (Score:3, Informative)
Peapod [wikipedia.org] founded in 1989 by Andrew and Thomas Parkinson, both of whom are still executive officers. Its original name was IPOD for Information and Product on Demand, but as they were creating their business cards they changed it to Peapod on a whim. Before 1996, it provided an on-line grocery shopping service in partnership with Jewel in Chicago and surrounding towns; Safeway in San Francisco, California; Randall's in Houston, Texas; and Kroger in Columbus, Ohio.
In 1996, it launched its website and became one of the earliest internet start-ups; the company made the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing privately held US companies. It parlayed this success and good press into an IPO on NASDAQ. Between 1997 and 2000, Peapod expanded into Boston and Watertown, Massachusetts, Long Island, New York, and Norwalk, Connecticut in partnership with Stop & Shop. In late 2000, they entered Washington, DC and surrounding towns with Giant Food.
The year 2000 also saw a fundamental change in Peapod's corporate structure. Worldwide grocery giant Royal Ahold bought 51% of Peapod's shares in June 2000. In August 2001, Royal Ahold bought out the entire company. As a result, Peapod cancelled its contracts with all grocery companies except for Royal Ahold's two main American chains, Stop & Shop and Giant Food. This caused Peapod to abandon San Francisco, Houston, and Columbus entirely, but the company maintained service, albeit with some interruptions and inconveniences, everywhere else.
The iPod [wikipedia.org] in comparison was launched in 2001.
Re:What a typical waste (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think it's entirely the same game. The word "pod" existed long before the iPod did. But I think the word "droid" was actually invented by George Lucas, so it makes perhaps slightly more sense that he owns it and people need a license if they want to name their products "Droid".
Of course if "droid" was an existing dictionary word before Star Wars was made, LucasFilm wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and anyone could name their products Droid. At least as long as nobody else in the same market was already using that name.
Re:What a typical waste (Score:4, Informative)
Car is not a trademark. Your logic would only work if someone else had been using car as a trademark to describe something other than an automobile. No one was using 'pod' to describe portable media players before Apple - when it launched, I remember people saying it was a stupid name (what does it even mean? It's the place where I keep peas?).
Trademark law is not just about the word, it's about the context. A good example for geeks is VAX. This was a brand of minicomputers from DEC and a brand of vacuum cleaners from a British company. Because minicomputers and vacuum cleaners are entirely different markets, there is no possibility of confusion, so there is no trademark infringement (although the adverts saying 'Nothing sucks like a VAX!' didn't do DEC much good in the UK).
Portable media players and portable video projectors, however, are very similar markets. I would expect a future generation iPod to include a picoprojector, and there was an iPod Video, so calling something a Video Pod is likely to confuse buyers, making it a trademark issue.
Re:What a typical waste (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What a typical waste (Score:3, Informative)
Apple did not Trademark "pod" they trademarked "iPod"
This does not mean they can harass any and all manufacturers who have the word pod in their product names or ones who prefix other words with i-
Only if there would be confusion in the marketplace about who's product it is can a claim be made .....
the original Trademark was for a portable MP3 player, that now also does video.... Daniel's Video Pod is not portable, does not play MP3's is a projector
Not really a lot in common ....Apple does not need to have noticed but there are already products named almost all of [a-z]pod that they have not yet sued ..