“You may have heard that Apple’s considering unveiling a gold-colored iPhone early next month,” Brian Fung reports for The Washington Post. “Well, so have a bunch of irate Frenchmen, it turns out.”
“The problem isn’t that the iPhone will be gold, per se. Rather, it’s that the device could be called a light shade of ‘champagne,'” Fung reports. “And now a trade association for French wines is preemptively warning Apple against doing so.”
Fung reports, “‘We can’t say that a ‘champagne’ colour exists,’ said Charles Goamaere, legal director for the Interprofessional Committee for Champagne Wine, in an interview with French media this week. Therefore, any company wanting to use the name ‘Champagne’ would be doing so [only] to attract all the benefits that surround [the label.]’ Goamere’s trade group is among the biggest defenders of the champagne brand. If you’re a sparkling wine producer located outside of the Champagne region of France, you have to call your beverage something else.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a color, not a drink or foodstuff.
If there’s still an issue, Apple should buy the rights to use “Champagne,” then license it back to the French sparkling wine producers of the Champagne region with a perpetual, exclusive license.
And isn’t “a bunch of irate Frenchmen” superfluous?*
*Just kidding: We love the French (mostly)!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Must be a slow day at the Whinery… 😉
Perhaps they’d enjoy some cheese with their whine?
Anyhoo, It’s fairly well known that you can’t use the Champagne name if you’re creating fizzy water outside that region.
I love that they’re up in arms though about something that hasn’t even been announced yet and could go by quite a few other names as far as color descriptors go.
How about calling it “Definitely Not Champagne”?
Perhaps, they are just confused. ‘How can apple produce champagne?’
Actually you can. You just have to pay a big license fee.
Maybe California and the US should demand that France give back the grape vines rootstock we sent them to rescue their wine industry when the phylloxera aphid destroyed all of their vineyards??! Perhaps they might think twice before demanding we not use Champagne to designate a color? Did they get their pantaloons in a wad about Lawrence Welk’s Champagne Music?
F*ck ’em! Call it “California Sparkling Wine”!
Keeping with the California/Mavericks theme!
The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys make me laugh sometimes…
Perfect.
Do not worry – everyone around the world laughs at the Americans.
Do not worry – we could care less.
Funnily enough, that’s what the French say too. Maybe you do have lots in common after all.
As for the iPhone, call the colour Shampagne. Sort of gets the point across.
So would “shampain” but then that’s Samsung’s product….
You mean Assmung
Don’t worry. The French will eventually surrender on this. They always do.
France, the only country that has back up lights on their tanks.
heh.
That’s actually “we could NOT care less,” as in “since we don’t care at all, it would not be possible to care any less.” Yes, people around the world laughs at us Americans, until it’s time for something to be defended, or paid for, or rescued. It’s interesting that those countries that call upon us LEAST for that kind of stuff are the ones who laugh at us the least (e.g., UK, Canada, Israel).
Actually, I prefer ‘I could care less’, as in, ‘yes I could care less than I do, by about a Planck length above absolute zero’.
Try ‘could not care less’.
The French national army uniform is a skirt and sneakers so they can poop while they run.
Laugh until they need us to save their asses from the latest national disaster or war.
My god, we finally agree on something. You’ve ruined my day, lol.
I have seen items marketed as being champagne colored. I think that champagne was used in the color description for a Honda vehicle back in the mid-2000s. It is Apple who would be raising the value of that name by associating it with the iPhone.
Screw ’em just call it “White Wine” or “Chardonnay.”
If only they could be so lucky.
Honda has a champagne frost color. I have never heard about an uproar over that.
As well as Pioneer with various AV equipment.
Well, come on…everyone has to either troll Apple or sue them.
Did they warn Crayola also?
Crayola doesn’t have a champagne color.
Uh, that was the point sir. Neither does Apple…
My mom had a 1969 “Champaign Gold” Ford Mustang. Are the French going to start complaining about all the burgundy red colored stuff that inundates the world? It’s a color mon amis. Oh, by the way, Earth called. It is complaining about all the people using the word “Sky” to describe their blue color.
How about BHA Gold?
Every desperate fool wants a piece of apples cash…
Now these idiots.. Setting the grounds..
Wonder why they never objected to so many car companies using that color designation!
The French will only approve if it’s a white flag flying over Paris.
Implying that the French are cowardly is just inane. The French fight EVERYTHING. It’s Americans who lie down and take it in fear when the right-wingers launch crazy attacks on their freedoms. Have you forgotten Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office
America fights? Capitalistic pigs.
America does nothing? Lazy capitalistic pigs.
Everything…except the Germans.
That would only work of course on civilized societies that recognize the white flag, so it would be a total waste of time on the United States who have clearly demonstrated their total disregard for the white flag and won’t hesitate to massacre innocent women and children, even though they did have the white flag raised.
Innocent my ass. The “innocent women” bear and raise the “innocent children” who grow up to be murdering terrorists. Fuck the women and fuck the children. Oh yeah, and fuck the French.
So I guess you wouldn’t mind if we just massacred thousands of American mothers too? They all can’t be innocent since some of their kids might become criminals too, right?
Sometimes I wonder if people just post this stuff for the shock value or do they really think this way? Scary thought, huh?
If you’re talking about places like Chicago then yeah, I wouldn’t mind at all; that or sterilization. Does that shock you?
Better than a white flag over Ground Zero.
Ironically it is they trying to gain free publicity not the reverse
I think they are going a little too far on defending the name Champagne … Maybe these Frenchman should use something to take the edge off or simply use something new.
Champagne: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champagne_(color)
Are they gonna sue everybody?
http://www.sherwin-williams.com/homeowners/color/find-and-explore-colors/paint-colors-by-family/SW6644-champagne/
Don’t go giving them ideas. They could end up bankrupting every luxury brand in the world.
These guys would like a word about that!:
Producers of fine California méthode champenoise champagnes for 131 years.
KORBEL is a registered trademark.
Korbel produces as much Champagne as Samsung produces iPhones.
Champagne is not a color. Its a region. And in EU designs the wine made in that territory
Among the many thousands of descriptive names for colors that are authorized by the International Colour Council, Champagne is one.
And Orange is a region of France, therefore it is not a color either?
That is named after William of Orange. And it does not have protected status
The colour orange is named after the fruit.
Meanwhile, William of Orange’s family got their name from the region of modern day France they ruled, not the other way round. It was the name of a principality that existed within the Kingdom of Burgundy. By the time William of Orange was born that Kingdom was long gone and the House of Orange held the throne of the Netherlands, having helped that country win independence from Spain.
Orange the region and orange the fruit don’t share a common source for their names. It’s coincidental.
Sparkling wine from the region of Champagne is also called “Champagne”, so the word is NOT just a region.
The product well-known as “Champagne” also has a common color, the name of which has been in use for nearly a century. Merriam-Websters defines the word as “a pale orange yellow to light grayish-yellowish brown.”
The Champagne trade association is certainly within its rights to stop non-French sparkling wine producers from using the word, but the word is commonly used in everyday language to describe a pale gold color. You and they need to get over yourselves.
Champagne is a popular colour throughout the women’s apparel industry. No hysteria there.
Apple has been vigorously defending their IP ever since they got burned by Microsoft (thanks to the the sugar water sales bozo). In that fight Apple has often come across as irrational, patenting “rounded corners”.
I’m sure that to many here, similar efforts to protect the Champagne brand by the sparkling wine producers of the Champagne region of France seem irate and silly. But they have apparently seen so many other sparkling wine producers of the world use the brand name Champagne for their product, so one should not be surprised when they have this knee-jerk at anyone’s even mentioning the word Champagne, regardless of context.
There are differences. The trademark in France for Champagne as it applies to wine is enforceable against other wine producers. However, no one is going to confuse an iPhone with a bubbly alcoholic drink.
But nobody will confuse a Champagne colored iPhone with a bottle of Champagne any more than Microsoft can sue GE for making a Windows Air Conditioner.
Trademarks have limits and can only be enforced when the term causes confusion. A Champagne dress or phone will cause no confusion. A bottle of Wine called Champagne will cause confusion so legally they could prevail in a lawsuit in the Wine industry but I’d like to see them try to sue and claim ownership of the color.
Wrong. Apple did NOT try to patent “round corners”. Those words were simply part of the product description that introduced the lawsuit. Samsung tried to deflect the underlying substantive IP issues by trivializing Apple’s suit, saying “but they want to patent ROUND CORNERS, sheesh”! Uncritical and/or uninformed people bought the (lame) argument, though. But you don’t hear about it in actual court deliberations. As far as Samsung copying the overall “look and feel” of the iPhone — is there any doubt in anyone’s mind? The recent Court of Appeals ruling that admonished the ITC and cited established legal criteria for determining innovative — and patentable — work sounds like a meaningful turn in the right direction for Apple to obtain legal satisfaction of its design innovation claims.
“Wrong. Apple did NOT try to patent “round corners”.”
No, that’s right, they did not, and nor did Predrag say they did. What Predrag said was Apple often came across as doing that. Playing on that perception was one of the more effective, albeit misleading, strategies Samsung employed in that court case.
The copyrights about the use of the world Champagne not only rule in France, but in every EUropean Country. If there is a legal issue could be banned in Germany, UK, Spain, Italy and another 40 countries
It might only be able to say sparkling wine on the label, but EVERYONE in the world calls it champagne. 😛
By “the world” you mean the USA, don’t you?
Waterboy, it ONLY applies to a product where there could be legitimate confusion, as in any pale gold sparkling wine.
It CANNOT be applied to a colour, as there is prior use of the word ‘champagne’ to describe a pale gold colour for a whole variety of products, some actually from the EU, as in Philips/Marantz use of the word ‘champagne’ to describe the colour I’d their audio equipment back in the eighties.
Apple can, and should, tell the French to go screw themselves.
Boycot Champagne…
You do that – stop drinking Champagne.
“We can’t say champaign is a color” (because our lawyers won’t let us).
Just wait until the French discover that there’s a white iPhone.
Perhaps the fat yellow one will be the American version.
Back in the 80’s high-end hifi was sold in either silver or a pale gold, usually referred to as champaign; Pioneer, Sony and particularly Marantz had equipment in that colour. Marantz is an offshoot of Philips, who are a Netherlands-based company. I have no recollection of the French getting pissy about the use of the word to describe any of those companies products, so why are they getting their (French) knickers in a bunch about Apple, I wonder?
As it happens, Apple have not confirmed that the new iPhone will even be in this colour, let alone what word they use to describe it.
I hope they just call it Gold, then these whiney French will look like the complete fucking idiots that they actually are.
Looks more like Cava to me.
🙂
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuXdhow3uqQ&w=420&h=315]
The Vermont Apple Growers Association demands that Apple stop calling Apple products Apple.
Oh Frenchie… “Suck-me-Blue”!… oh wait, ‘Sacrebleu”! Sacrebleu!…
“Irate Frogs” is like “dying in New Jersey.”
Redundant.
What is all this nonsense about? They are Rumours for goodness sake?
Apple, in the next couple of weeks (whenever) will tell us all (French included) just what they are going to release, colours and everything. Then you can all get agitated and have heart attacks or just be happy in the knowledge that Tim, Sir Jonathon and Staff have DONE IT AGAIN!
New here? As soon as I saw the word “French” I figured this was good for at least 4 pages.
Since the French are complaining about the Champaign colored iPhone (and it hasn’t even been released yet,) Apple should just not sell Champaign colored iPhones in France. 🙂
A message to les whiners Francaise:
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yjNbcKkNY&w=420&h=315]