41–50 of 69 posts
User bcwood posted this in a neutral, matter of fact, way. Then I wonder why almost all the subsequent comments are so argumentative and biased. Chill, guys. Is being polite and cool not the thing to be on Internet?
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A cool brand name they probably thought long and hard about before adopting it. A brand that will have resonance with the general population at the cost of alienating some developers. This is what 'crossroads between liberal arts and technology' is about; changing the pecking order in the technology business: Apple first, normal people second, developers a distant third.
How does the Facetime brand alienate developers exactly?
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Whether they own the store or not has nothing to do with it. It's a straightforward legal claim. They have sent the same kinds of notices to app developers for other trademark owners. It's especially straightforward because they have published their own app with that name, so it's not just a matter of over-zealous trademark protection.
As the gp said. A trademark dispute is not necessarily a straightforward legal at all. Buying the claim of one side and using your power to enforce an otherwise tenuous sounds like ... uh bullying.
Apple has enforced the (unregistered) trademark of a fellow indie game developer the same way. Documentation was provided, the other party changed the name of their app, and everyone continued on their way without tears or lawyers. All quite civil if you ask me.
And what do we learn from this? Make sure you trademark your application's name soon. I learned it the hard way too, BTW...
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That depends on what their app did. From what I can make out with Google cache, it was a timer app. The two trademarks Facetime Corp held (and which Apple has supposedly bought) orient around "computer software used for communicating over global computer networks using voice, text, fax, or e-mail." A timer app called Facetime doesn't on the face of it appear to violate either of these other Facetime trademarks but..…
Whether they own the store or not has nothing to do with it. It's a straightforward legal claim. They have sent the same kinds of notices to app developers for other trademark owners. It's especially straightforward because they have published their own app with that name, so it's not just a matter of over-zealous trademark protection.
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This is in fact fair play. Do you dispute that the trademark was taken and that the app name did not infringe?
It appears that the app name did not infringe, yes. Apple's trademark is for communications software and his is for a timer program.
You register in a class, here in the UK FaceTime wasn't registered until this March. It's registered against the Nice Classificiation (http://www.wipo.int/classifications/nivilo/nice/index.htm?la...) meaning that if you want to use the term FaceTime for anything encompassed by classes 16 or 35 then you need to license the trademark.
Apple are an international company and need to abide by trademark restrictions in other jurisdictions in which they are operating commercially.
FaceTime appears to have been registered using the Madrid system in more places than just the US.
So, whilst the US-only classes are quite narrow this is not the end of the locus of operation and so international trademarks have to be considered.
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Whether they own the store or not has nothing to do with it. It's a straightforward legal claim. They have sent the same kinds of notices to app developers for other trademark owners. It's especially straightforward because they have published their own app with that name, so it's not just a matter of over-zealous trademark protection.
So Apple records should get Apple to cease selling music.
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Whether they own the store or not has nothing to do with it. It's a straightforward legal claim. They have sent the same kinds of notices to app developers for other trademark owners. It's especially straightforward because they have published their own app with that name, so it's not just a matter of over-zealous trademark protection.
So Apple records should get Apple to cease selling music.
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All you'd have to do is Google to avoid making a very, very silly comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
Not silly as that is the very case I was alluding to.