No Trademark iWorries

2010.02.08   prev     next

When Apple announced the iPhone in early 2007, there was some concern that they would be sued by Cisco, which had sold a product called “iPhone” some years before that. But, although they had not been able to reach an agreement with Cisco before the January product announcement, they still called it iPhone, apparently without fear that anything too terrible would happen. And as far as I know, nothing did.

Now the same thing seems to be happening with the iPad. At least one company in Apple’s home country, and others elsewhere, have already been selling some kind of products called “iPad,” and are now threatening to sue. Apple surely was not ignorant of the existing “iPad” products — but went ahead anyway and used the name, again without much apparent fear that it would be a problem.

Now — I’m going to predict that nothing much will come of these companies’ efforts to sue Apple over their product names. The reason why is simple:

1. You can’t trademark common, public-domain words, such as “phone” or “pad.”

2. So the only thing that makes “iPhone” and “iPad” trademarkable is the little “i” in front of them.

3. Apple has been selling products named iThis or iThat for something like fifteen years now.

4. That doesn’t mean, of course, that Apple automatically owns all product names of the form “iSomething” — but it does mean that anyone who tries to sue Apple over the usage of such names will have a very hard time winning their case.

For comparison, imagine that I ran a modestly successful restaurant, and I came out with a not-particularly-popular sandwich called “McTurkey.” Maybe McDonald’s wouldn’t sue me. And if they did, maybe they wouldn’t win.

But if they came out with their own McTurkey a few years after my sandwich first appeared, I wouldn’t likely be able to sue them. Not successfully, anyway.

Update 2010.03.26 — Apple now owns the iPad U.S. trademark. That was quick.

Update 2011.06.11 — Same story again, this time with iCloud. Doesn’t look like Apple’s too worried that this is going to be a problem.