“In a suit filed yesterday in the US Disctrict Court in Arizona, a company named iCloud Communications, LLC has claimed trademark infringements against Apple over the use of the name iCloud,” TNW reports.
“Specifically, iCloud Communications is claiming that Apple’s heavy promotion of the iCloud product is damaging to its business and has all but removed the branding of the name from itself and placed it onto Apple,” TNW reports. “To make matters somewhat worse, there’s some accusation that Apple’s services are nearly identical to the ones being offered by iCloud Communciations [since its formation in 2005].”
TNW reports, “There’s no specific amount of monetary relief set, but the suit does call for ‘all profits, gains and advantages’ as well as ‘all monetary damages sustained.’ Further, the suit asks for Apple to refrain from using the iCloud name and to ‘deliver for destruction all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material’ with the iCloud name.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: An agreement will be reached and that will be that and whatever ado there is now will end up being about nothing.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Nesta” for the heads up.]
I’m getting ahead of the game. I’ve just now registered iMDN.com.
Steve likes the “i” in his product names. Regardless what Apple’s legal team finds in researching other companies using that name he has 53 Billion reasons why Apple will persevere in using it.
iSue!! iSue!!!
iCloud communications NEVER filed for the trademark, iCloud nor iCloud Communications, the most they can do is request (on the grace period to do so) Previous usage of the term and claim the TM for them, (NO MONEY, regular TM complaint) but since Apple purchased a REAL TM from Xcerion AB registered on 2008 on Europe, the claim to use in on US is the only dispute. Probalbly iCloud comunicatons will lose because it is only one word of their company name, and never botherer to TM (it is cheap, less than 1 hour of those lawyers)
Apple has created a trademark with a universe of products that all have an “i” in it. see: youtube.com/watch?v=Vhj6Xzc9eYk
The very nature of a trademark, or service mark, is to create brand name recognition. Basically you cant have a business that offers the same product or service with the same name. I think they have no case. Anyone else that attempts to sue based on any “i” identifier that references the concept will fail.
Apple is i.
Bullshit “Apple’s services are nearly identical.” icloud comm. is a VoIP service. There is no mention of anything remotely similar to Apple’s icloud. If they keep up claims like this I can’t see this going anywhere for them.
Hey kyle, why don’t you do a little reaearch before you go running your jibs.
geticloud.com, which is these bozo’s website, has a link in the upper-right side of their home page that leads to their data center website. Obviously, that qualifies as a similar service.
There is one ICLOUD trademark registered in the US:
Reg. No. 3744821
Reg. Date February 2, 2010
Owner: (REGISTRANT) Xcerion AB CORPORATION SWEDEN Drottninggatan 23, Box 569; SE-581 07 Linköping SWEDEN
This is the company Apple purchased the iCloud.com domain from and I imagine they also purchased the trademark at the same time they bought the domain.
There are 12 open applications register additional ICLOUD trademarks – 11 of them directly identify apple as the applicant as Apple.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4008%3Aipeodl.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA1%24LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=icloud&p_tagrepl%7E%3A=PARA2%24COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query
In TM dispute, it boils down to who has been continuously using the disputed mark first. Highly likely that the iCloud Communication will prevail if their complaint is correct. You don’t need to register a TM with the Patent & Trademark Office (PTO). Registering a TM will allow the TM owner to sue in Federal Court and if the registered TM is more than 5 years old, it can be made incontestable, which is not the case here.