Court: Apple Doesn’t Own the Letter ‘i’

Ed Sutherland ()

Court: Apple Doesn’t Own the Letter ‘i’

Would an 'Apple Phone' be as Popular?

For years, the letter ‘i’ has been a goldmine for Apple; apply the letter to an ordinary object and you have lines outside your door waiting to buy the gadget. Apple may have to find another letter now that an Australian trade court sided with a handbag maker.

IP Australia, the government board that watches over trademarks, rejected Apple’s claim on the letter, noting the Cupertino, Calif. company didn’t prove “a person of ordinary intelligence and memory” would assume that just because a product carries the letter “i”, it was the brainchild of Steve Jobs. Although the case revolved around a laptop bag named DOPi — iPod backwards — the IP Australia judge, or registrar Michael Kirov (a self-proclaimed Apple fan) said that wasn’t enough to block sales.

Apple can keep its various current i-related trademarks, the court ruled.

Local reports characterized the trademark dispute as a battle of David and Goliath proportions. Apple, with $200 billion in the bank, was suing the DOPi’s maker, a Sydney-based company which made $71,000 in 2007.

This isn’t the first time Apple has gone to court to protect its image. In late 2009, Apple sued Macpro Computers, an Australian computer and tech support business that had operated under the name for 26 years, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Woolworth’s in that country was also threatened after Apple said the chain store’s new “W” logo bore a resemblance to an apple. In 2007, Apple sued networking giant Cisco over the term “iPhone,” a disagreement that resulted in an agreement permitting the two companies to both use the name.

Probably one of the longest-running trademark cases involving Apple was the battle with recording label Apple Corp., which began in 1978 and finally concluded in 2007. The two companies agreed Apple would own the Apple trademark, but would allow Apple Corps to use the name for some purposes.

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[via Silicon Alley Insider and Syndey Morning Herald]

8 comments »

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • Michael H

    Lesson 1: Corporate behemoths who pursue mindless litigation and claims like this in Australia are more often than not denied.

    I just wonder how many times Apple will try the patience of IP Australia before they either get a clue – or IP Australia just start rejecting their claims out of hand.

  • http://hikeeveryday.blogspot.com Hal Summers

    Apple doesn’t own the letter “i” anymore? Now Hal will have to change all his correspondence and now longer refer to himself in the third person. Hal doesn’t know if he can do that. But Hal will try.

  • Charli

    okay even Me will say that that was a tad much. Me can understand the ‘i’ for a tech based product particularly any form of computer or PMP/phone. Me thinks that makes some sense.

    Otherwise, Me thinks someone who is possibly not at Apple Legal anymore was off his/her rocker on that one.

  • nerg

    Charli, you need to change your user name

    Charlme

    ;)

  • Mark

    While I think it’s a bit silly that they would want to copyright the letter ‘i’ I can also understand the reasoning. Yes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but if there’s a chance that someone would mistake an ‘i’ product as an Apple product then I can see where Apple would take issue with that.

    And if they didn’t defend even the small ones then people would start to think it’s okay and when you did say something people would wonder why you didn’t starting chasing these claims when they were appeared harmless.

  • Alexis

    what I don’t understand is that the name is iPod spelled backwards and the way you wrote it in the post shows the last letter “i” to be in lower case so I could see the problem with that product…it’s obvious that they are using the iPod name and doing it in a way to be deceitful…

    I’m with Apple on this one

  • ICD

    >Woolworth’s in that country was also threatened after Apple said the chain store’s

    This man gets paid to professionally write poor grammar, destroying any credibility his employers might have otherwise had.

  • Growingdollar

    iLike this article.