Apple Loses Aussie Trademark Complaint Over "i" Name

CuteSteveJobs writes "Apple has been dealt a severe blow having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter 'i' for product naming. IP Australia, the government body that oversees trademark applications, rejected Apple's complaint against a company selling 'DOPi' laptop bags. Last year Australian computer company Macpro Computers claimed that after 26 years of flying its own Macpro brand that Apple was 'trying to burn us out' with legal fees. This was after Apple released its own Macpro line 3½ years ago. Apple lost that complaint, but is appealing. Last year Apple went after supermarket Woolworths complaining their new logo which featured a 'W' fashioned into the shape of an apple. (Woolworths sells real apples.)"

Way to stick it to the man!

[hellop2]

Apple didn't invent the 'i' concept anyways. The 'i' comes from "Internet" because we called it the "iNet" back in the BBS days.

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Re:Proof the Australian legal system is broken

[timmarhy]

not only that but the government is looking at opening an enquiry into scientology's tax free status.

combine that with peter garrett getting sacked from the environmental portfolio for his pink batts failure, and if we can get Rudd to reign in his spending, we might have a 1/2 sane government and legal system in the works.

Re:iFirst

[daath93]

In what universe is apple the fourth largest publicly traded American company? The Forbes Global 2000 [forbes.com] has them ranked at 113 (behind many many American companies) with about 4.86 billion in profits and a total market value of 79.54 billion. Even Microsoft is only ranked 49th with 3 times the profits and market value.

Re:iFirst

[DMUTPeregrine]

Well, of course. We already said he'd be a total douche.

Re:iFirst

[hanabal]

the beatles saga was another case of Apples douchiness actually. The Beatles record label was called apple records a subsidiary or Apple Corps, they had a trademark and everything. Along comes apple computers and they struck a deal, signed and everything, as long as apple computers stays out of the music game its all good. This is pretty much standard for trademarks, the idea is that if anyone hears the name apple associated with music they will think of The Beatles. for pretty much any trademark the rules are stay out of the same market and you can use the same name. All good so far. Then apple computers starts selling ipods and itunes, hey wait a sec they said they weren't going to do that. This is why the beatles sued, and rightfully so.

Re:iFirst

[hakey]

I was also surprised by that, so I looked it up. As of the end of Friday trading, they just edged out Wal-Mart for number 3.

US companies by Market Cap:
Exxon Mobil 315.38B
Microsoft 256.45B
Apple 205.57B
Wal-Mart 205.37B
Berkshire Hathaway 203.20B
Google 184.28B
Procter & Gamble 183.92B
General Electric 181.81B
Johnson & Johnson 176.62B

Re:It's a kwaZulu prefix, get over it

[Anonymous Coward]

IF anyone has a right to complain, it's the Zulus. In kwaZulu (their language), an i- is prefixed to any loan word, and the following word is then capitalized. So radio in kwaZulu would be: iRadio. Looks familiar?

Actually it's isiZulu. kwaZulu is a province of South Africa. Also, the prefix is e, not i. The more you know...

Re:Erm... no?

[Alicat1194]

Woolworths is primarily a supermarket business, though they do have controlling interests in several electrical goods and technology stores (as well as liquor, hotels and hardware).

The 'W' logo mentioned in the summary is used primarily for the supermarkets - the electrical / tech stores are branded differently eg: 'Dick Smiths' and 'Tandy', not 'Dick Smiths a subsidiary of Woolworths'.

Re:You mean Apple doesn't sell real apples...

[makomk]

Well, they would do, since outside of New Zealand and Australia Woolworths refers to an entirely unrelated chain of stores that sells totally different things...

Re:iFirst

[evanspw]

Market capitaization. ie, it's stock price multiplied by the number of share on issue.

There's no "one" way to measure a company's size. The Forbes article is horrendously out of date on market cap. Apple is the clear #2 tech stock now behind microsoft. I think at the moment, the order goes Exxon, Microsoft, PetroChina, then Apple.

It's really big, and the fact that its price to earnings ratio is much higher than any other really huge company means the market thinks its profits are fairly safe, with more upside.

Re:Say what you want about Microsoft...

[ScrewMaster]

It's why Microsoft got bigger than Apple. Because they were actually less evil and more open than Apple were.

Not really. It's because Microsoft chose to market an operating system that would run on computers made by any company that was "PC Compatible" and then worked out deals with those manufacturers to only offer Microsoft OSes. And those backroom deals were sleazy and illegal and Microsoft got called out for them, so don't give Microsoft a free ride on the "evil" bit. Apple, on the other hand, insisted on owning the whole enchilada, lock stock and barrel, never seeing themselves as a pure software company. Gates even told Jobs at one point that if he wanted to make a whole lot of money, just sell the OS. In any event, it comes down to two entirely different business models selling to two entirely different demographics.

Having said, that I can honestly say that I don't particularly like either corporation, but at this point in my life, I make my living working with Microsoft development tools coding Windows applications. That's because you're right: Windows is more open, in terms of the hardware it will run on.