Indian smartphone maker is serious about banning iPhone brand name

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Gene testing, coming soon to an iPhone near you. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Could Apple have to change the iPhone's name in one of its potentially biggest upcoming markets? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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After China, India is the next big frontier for Apple: with a massive 1.2 billion citizens, and an impressively growing smartphone market that is far from saturated.

So far Apple has had great success in the country, as the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have sold roughly twice the volume of previous generation iPhones, and Apple has even proved willing to take a short-term hit on the earnings front to get more iPhones into people’s hands in the long run.

But one company isn’t happy about the iPhone’s success in India — and it’s doubling its efforts to get Apple barred from using the popular smartphone name in the country altogether.

The company is iVoice Enterprises, which back in early 2007 attempted to precede the likes of Xiaomi by producing an affordable cellphone, named iFon — or phonetically “iPhone.” The company wound up releasing several handsets, but the arrival of the better-known iPhone caused investors to back out, funding to dry up, and an overall “irrecoverable financial impact on our business model.”

iVoice filed a lawsuit against Apple to get it to drop the name “iPhone” in India, and now it’s also opposing Apple’s other iPhone-related trademarks in the country, meaning that Apple could conceivably be unable to use any mention of the iPhone name in the country.

“We’ve already petitioned to remove the original ‘iPhone’ icon … but in order to completely protect ourselves, we’ve [asked] to remove all the icons which Apple claims to be their proprietary marks,”  iVoice Operations Director Venkateshwaran Vaiyapur told Cult of Mac.

The pending trademarks which have been filed by Apple but not yet awarded in India include an iPhone with Apple logo, as well as the “Made for iPhone” and “Works with iPhone” tags.

Drunk? How about a smartphone? Photo: iVoice
The original ads for the iFon. Photo: iVoice

Apple has previously failed to respond in a timely manner to complaints brought by iVoice. By expanding its legal case against Apple to include every iPhone-related trademark, the Indian company is demonstrating how seriously it is taking the situation.

“[The] ideal conclusion in India shall be total removal of ‘iPhone’ marks from the Trademark Registry which is our prayer in front of court, which is the basis for their original case against our ‘iFon’ mark,” Venkateshwaran Vaiyapur continued. “[We want to be] the bonafide and sole owner of [the] iFon icon in India.”

The idea that Apple could be barred from referring to its globally recognized handsets as the iPhone in India may sound far-fetched, but it’s not without precedent. In late 2012, Apple lost an appeal meaning that carriers in Mexico can no longer make use of the word “iPhone,” since the name infringes on a different “iFone” trademark — this time belonging to a small call center in Mexico, which has owned the name since 2003.

A resolution of the case is expected in the coming months. In the meantime, Apple is continuing to expand its presence in India through the opening of 500 “iOS stores,” operated by distributor Redington, which currently accounts for around 70 percent of Apple’s sales in the country.

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