Apple’s future won’t be brought to you by the letter ‘i’

“Apple has been dealt a severe blow having been told that it no longer has a monopoly on the letter ‘i’ as part of the name for its products,” Julian Lee and Asher Moses report for The Sydney Morning Herald.

MacDailyNews Take: That’s not really what they were told, but, whatever, hype it up beyond all recognition, guys.

Lee and Asher report, “A trademarks tribunal has knocked back Apple’s bid to stop a small company from trademarking the name DOPi for use on its laptop bags and cases for Apple products.”

“Apple argued that the DOPi name – which is iPod spelt backwards – was too similar to its own popular portable music player, which has sold in excess of 100 million units worldwide,” Lee and Asher report. “Apple has long since relied on its legal muscle to pursue any individual or company it sees as infringing on its copyright and trademarks.”

Lee and Asher report, “But its ambitions to make widespread claims on the letter “i” came to a grinding halt when the tribunal rejected Apple’s claim that [consumers] might be confused into thinking that they were buying an Apple product. While the case does not affect Apple’s current trademarks, companies wanting to use the ‘i’ prefix will have a better chance of getting away with it, lawyers say.”

MacDailyNews Take: Even though the name in question, “DOPi,” involves the letter “i” as a suffix, of course. Lee and Asher’s unnamed “lawyers” must be dyslexic.

Full piece of much ado about nothing here.