“Brazilian electronics maker IGB Electronica SA has announced a new line of Android phones under the IPHONE brand, a trademark that was originally applied for in Brazil in 2000,” Jordan Golson reports for MacRumors.
“Apple will either file a lawsuit, or perhaps more likely, begin negotiations for a settlement deal,” Golson reports. “Apple was involved in a similar trademark issue in China, with Proview owning the “iPad” trademark. Apple ended up paying that company $60 million to gain control of the ‘iPad’ trademark.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: ‘Tis a quality company that positions itself to extort a worldwide innovator and/or attempt to confuse its would-be customers with a bait-and-switch of inferior wares.
That’s funny. That’s where I sell my special “LevIs” blue jeans.
For the record–I live Apple–I’m a large shareholder, it does however surprise me right or wrong that a company of there size and magnitude would not trademark the name iPhone and iPad, etc, etc in every single significant or insignificant country–just saying I’m a little surprised that they would not protect there respective names and myself as a shareholder instead of paying everyone off out of the war chest of capital !
If you haven’t noticed, the article says that the Brazilian company registered the name IPHONE in 2000 (seven years before iPhone was announced).
But when did the iMac come out? 1998 ? They should have covered them selves.
So your thought is that Apple should have, in 1998 which were still the “dark days” when Apple was still in debt and its success was not assured, paid money in *every* country covering every possible device it could *ever* produce? The cost would have run into the hundreds of millions.
I don’t believe the company was ever in debt. In fact it had about 4 billion cash reserves and people were still pessimistic about its future then. The shares were about $9-11 a share.
Really? Because according to Steve’s biography, apple was days away from going out of business.
Not true, whatever may be in that book. Apple had been battling MS over the GUI lawsuit, and even though it was eventually dismissed due to some asinine contract with MS which give them access to certain Mac system features, even when they were only given inside peeks so they could keep developing Word, Excel, Works, etc. in the days before Windows. Despite the loss in some sense for Apple over the whole GUI thing on a technicality, when Steve came back he realized that to keep Macs viable, he’d need MS to keep writing Word and Excel (Office stuff) for at least a few more years, so a peace offering, burying the hatchet for the time being form of “settlement” was MS buying a million bucks worth of Apple stock. That didn’t save Apple, because even then Apple had no debt, and about a $1 billion in cash. What Jobs wanted was time to build onto his ideas, get rid of the clones, keep Microsoft Word, etc on the Mac… and this deal made that happen. Microsoft, if they hung onto their shares, made out like bandits. Steve was able to get the iMac going, simplify the product lines, create iPods, iTunes, and the rest is history.
What Predrag said
It surprises me that someone of your advanced Appleness and supposed intelligence can spell “their(correct)” as “there(incorrect)” twice in the same paragraph. Just saying.
They didn’t spell it wrong … It was the auto correct Lol
Hindsight was supposed to provide 20/20 vision. Seems it still has a blind spot when the beholder is short sighted.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Cisco have the ‘iPhone’ rights? I thought Apple and Cisco ironed it out with some kind of monetary compensation now long ago did Cisco have the iPhone rights?
How*
It was IOS, not iPhone.
=:~)
http://www.pcworld.com/article/128499/article.html
Chas it was IPhone not iOS that Cisco had as linked to by Hmmmm.
This is as much about nothing, IGB is going to have to pay allot to try to defend this since Cisco owned the name and through negotiations came to a deal that Apple could use the trademark name as well as Cisco, and it looks as if Cisco might still have the rights to this that superceed ign.
We will see.
But the thing is about 2-3 months ago a dinky company in Mexico won a case against Apple on the ‘ifono’ trademark. So, that being said, how far does Ciscos rights date back too, that let’s the Mexicans win that. I would think Apple woulda had that (Cisco) in their legal arsenal.
OMG
Didn’t Apple try to sue them earlier this year (or perhaps last year) to get the name off them?
If so then this is kinda their own doing. If not, well, I still can’t say I feel too judgemental that they’d try to get a quick few million, especially in that region. I love apple stuff, my house is like a showroom, but for better or worse that’s the nature of the business world.
More patent trolling… I’d say let them sell their little IPHONE branded Android piece of crap until they go out of business naturally on their own, but don’t pay them a penny, since it’s a brand thing, not a product thing. Sometimes by ignoring the trolls, they lose relevance.
Congratulations Brazil, just graduated from Samsung’s school of charlatans. Must make you proud.