Legal battles just doesn’t seem to go away for Apple at the moment. The Tokyo-based company, Emonster, which owns the trademark for “Animoji” in the US, is suing Apple for using the word to name its iPhone X feature. Legal worries continue for Apple with an ongoing legal battle with Qualcomm and recently losing a lawsuit against VirnetX.
Emonster filed the suit on Wednesday in US federal court, saying,
Apple made the conscious decision to try to pilfer the name for itself.
Emonster owns an iOS app called Animoji that was launched in 2014, which lets people send emojis that are animated in a loop like GIFs. The app asks its users to compose the message in [...]
Twitter is trying to trademark the word ‘subtweet’ which means a tweet directed at someone without mentioning their Twitter handle typically as a form of mockery or criticism. To put it in pre-social media terms, it would mean to talk about someone behind their back. The trademark was filed on October 30 and was up for opposition on November 19.
The trademark is a commercial mark in that Twitter’s control of the word would exclusively be in commercial settings. So when Twitter gets the word trademarked, no one else can name their new product “Subtweet” or sell things that say “Subtweet” on them.
“When you need to protect your namespace from people who [...]
The iPhone has been considered one of the most game-changing products in recent history. It truly began the age of smartphones by giving a clear direction for other companies to follow.It is the most prominent smartphone in the market and has brought a great deal of revenue for the Cupertino-based giant; making its name synonymous with Apple’s. Now, in a surprising turn of events, an Indian company is challenging Apple for the trademark of the “iPhone”.
iVoice Ventures, claims that it owns the trademark for ‘iFon’ and hence is going to challenge the patent application of the iPhone in India. The company has filed [...]
Microsoft has to come up with a new name for Skydrive, its cloud based data storage service.
Skydrive is used by Microsoft users to upload and share content. Unfortunately Microsoft did not give enough consideration to the fact that British Sky Broadcasting might have had a trademark on the word “sky”.
A UK court has ruled that Microsoft has infringed on a trademark owned by British Sky Broadcasting Group with the name “SkyDrive.” Microsoft has reportedly agreed to change the name, and they will not appeal the court’s decision.
A new [...]
As reported by Bloomberg, Apple recently applied for iWatch name ownership in Japan, a country where devices arrive in stream — and the filing reveals that Apple’s iWatch is categorized as “handheld computer or watch device.
The maker of iPhones is seeking protection for the name which is categorized as being for products including a handheld computer or watch device, according to a June 3 filing with the Japan Patent Office that was made public last week.
Apple has a team of about 100 product designers working on a wristwatch-like device that may perform some of the tasks now handled by the iPhone and iPad, [...]
A U.S. District Court Judge has ruled that a lawsuit between Facebook and Timelines.com will in fact go to trial, after denying Facebook’s notion that the trademark-infringement lawsuit should be killed due to overly-generic trademarks, Bloomberg reports.
Timelines, a website to collaboratively record and share history, filed a complaint against Facebook in September, 2011, and sought a restraining order to bar Facebook from offering its Timeline service, but this was denied, according to records of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
The company was set up in January, 2007 and launched its Timelines.com website in 2009. It [...]
Apple’s appeal to overturn a previous ruling against its sole ownership of the “iPhone” trademark in Mexico was rebuffed on Friday, with the Mexican Supreme Court saying a local tech company holds the official rights to the “iFone” name in the country.
In a case of David vs. Goliath, the Mexican Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that iFone, a small IT company in Mexico City, is the rightful owner of the iPhone name in that country.
The company registered the name in 2003, four years before Apple rolled out the smartphone it dubbed the iPhone, [...]
Sony’s $1,47 billion acquisition of the remaining 50% stake in their Sony Ericsson joint venture closed in January of this year. The mobile division is called “Sony Mobile Communications” and they are focussed bringing the latest smartphones to market. The other key areas for Sony – that fall under the “One Sony” umbrella – are laptops, tablets and televisions.
It seems, just like so many other manufacturers, Sony is heading into the cloud and might possibly launch a storage service. According to a recent European trademark filing Sony has coined the term “MyXperia,” hinting at a [...]
A potential trademark dispute has forced Microsoft to drop the Metro name for Windows 8’s blocky, tile-based interface.
Talks with an “important European partner” have brought about the change according to internal memos seen by tech news site The Verge.
The partner is believed to be German retail giant Metro AG.
Microsoft is currently working out what to call the interface and said the new name would be announced soon.
The tiled interface is used on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone and has been called “Metro” ever since Microsoft started showing off its designs for the software.
Elements of it have also been [...]
Proview the company that sued Apple for the iPad trademark in China has been sued by its very own legal firm for the non payment of its legal fees for the said case. According to Sina Tech, Grandall Law Firm confirmed that its shady client refused to pay up the promised 4 percent of Apple’s settlement fee, which equates to $2.4 million.
Proview founder Yang Rongshan told Sina Tech that Grandall’s behavior is “nonsense,” and that his company isn’t obliged to pay back immediately as it isn’t under normal operation right now.
Apple has agreed to pay US$60 million for ownership of the iPad trademark in China, as part of a settlement with a little-known Chinese firm called Proview that had tried to ban sales of the tablet in the country, according to a local court.
The Guangdong Province Higher People’s Court announced the settlement on Monday, and stated that the legal dispute had been put to rest. Following the payment to Proview, Chinese authorities transferred the “IPAD” trademark to Apple.The two companies have been locked in a legal dispute to determine ownership of the iPad trademark, with Apple claiming to have bought the iPad trademarks for China from Proview in [...]
The Hong Kong court has sided with Apple in the Proview Technology vs Apple case, the former owns the iPad name in China. Apple claims that a Hong Kong court has sided with it in a similar battle
“Apple bought Proview’s worldwide rights to the iPad trademark in 10 different countries several years ago, Proview refuses to honor their agreement with Apple.”
Proview’s lawyer said that the court ruled that the trademark couldn’t be sold to a third party before hearing ends, meaning that it has no real affect on the dispute in China. Its like one way or another Apple is surrounded by [...]
