Apple files for "iPodcast" trademark
posted September 14th 2005 7:22PM
Whatchu talkin' about, Apple? Maybe it's really just a noble gesture to try and finally end the feud between Dave Winer and Adam Curry but sheesh, Apple — trying to get a trademark on the term "iPodcast" is kind of a slap in the face to all the folks who were doing this long before you came along (and in turn, all the folks who were publishing audio shows on the web before the term "podcasting" came along). Even worse, the two USPTO filings have all that vague and wildly inclusionary language we've come to know and hate about patent applications: "computers, computer peripherals, hand held computers, computer terminals, personal digital assistants, electronic organizers, electronic notepads, apparatus for recording, transmission and reproduction of sounds, images, or other data; magnetic data carriers." Plus, add to that "telecommunications services; communication by computer, computer intercommunication; telex, telegram and telephone services; rental, hire and leasing of communications apparatus and of electronic mailboxes; electronic bulletin board services," etc. Um… is there anything that wouldn't fall under the rubric of that patent? Yikes. Well, for what it's worth we throw our 2 measley pennies (which we'll summarize as "screw you and the RSS 2.0 enclosure you rode in on") into the ocean while the vast juggernaut of intellectual property imperialism marches on.
blogcast > podcast
That was random, but true.
Glory glory halleluja, the Apple marches on
Agree, the whole "patent something that isn't yours" really ticks me off. There is a place for patents, but seems that most big companies try to blanket cover and idea and then cry foul when someone "infringes" on their idea. For the little guy out there trying to come up with a great novel idea, its scarry to think that a big company like Apple can through a bunch of lawyers and vauge patents to bring you down. Its not just Apple, their is a whole host of companies out there. Rambus is one of them that comes to mind first!
You're blowing this way out of proportion. They're not patenting "podcast" but "iPodcast." Probably it's going to be a podcasting application or something like that. no need to get in a tizze over it.
Keep it up apple..syke. a Half-assed itunes phone with 100 song cap? drm song restrictions in itunes. BS rating system on podcast charts. and now this? pretty soon apple is going to stop being considered a cool-uptopian-underdog company and start being considered a "dick" technology company. it happens to the best of them...google...
I agree with Arthur. I don't get what the big deal is. It's a trademark, not a patent. They're not trying to claim they *invented podcasts*; they're saying they invented the *word* "iPodcast", which, AFAIK, they did.
I see this as positive, not negative at all. It means Apple may be working on a new tool to let people easily create and/or consume podcasts. That's awesome - it could be a major boon to the whole podcasting universe.
Same as #3 - Arthur. After all they produced
the pod in podcasting. I actually think this is
a quite natural move.
Guys, isn't it possible that they're not trying to just take over the word Podcast, but rather paving the way for a piece of software called "iPodcast"?
Since when have trademarks and patents been the same thing?
Back to high school people and brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
Get your story straight! Is it a Trademark they are getting or a Patent? The two are VERY different legally. A trademark would apply to any product with the same or similar name in those areas you listed, but has absolutely zero to do with any technology.
The trademark does sound a bit fishy, as "Podcast" is arguably already in wide use. I doubt they could sue someone to stop using it after it's already been done, so all they would be getting would be "iPodcast".
The more I think about this, the more reasonable it seems. It's not like Apple is trying to trademark the word "podcast".
...plus, there's no doubt that Apple invented "iPod" (both the word and the device) - the word from which "podcast" is directly derived. So why shouldn't they own the word "iPodcast"??
Actually, I think they could claim ownership of that word already anyway, since it specifically includes their existing "iPod" trademark, so really this is just a formality.
A little "i" makes a big difference. Apple also has a trademark on the words "iPhoto", "iMovie", "iWork", etc. Quick, knee-jerk reaction about them trying to control photos, movies, and work!
Not to mention Life itself!
Yup - don't forget that 'i'.
They can't trademark 'podcasting' itself, because it's in general usage and actually appears in one of the latest Oxford or Webster dictionaries.
Sounds like they'll use their TM for an application in the future...
Makes me think of a the possibilities of podcasting software. Are there any programs currently out there, that are just for podcasting, not audio production?
Hey Barb,
Overreact much?
Chill! They probably have a trademark for iPhoto, too. And iLife. And iTunes. It's too awkward anyways-- adding "i" in front of an already doubly made-up name (??-->iPod-->Podcast) isn't conducive to easy understanding of what it means.
Beside all that, this has nothing to do with patents. Trademarks & patents are too entirely different branches of intellectual property. Try to keep 'em straight next time, 'lright?
Hey,
Wanna bet 20 bucks they're updating their chapter tool (which makes out Enhanced Podcast enhanced) into a full fleged audio editing / enhancing app?
Just a thought,
Randall
for the last fucking time, a patent != a trademark.
My guess is that it's going to be an application to make podcasts. Kinda like what they did with iMovie.
wow a HUGE slap in the face for everyone who thought and USED this before Apple even knew it was going on!
trying to get a trademark on the term iPodcast is kind of a slap in the face to all the folks who were doing this long before you came along (and in turn, all the folks who were publishing audio shows on the web before the term podcasting came along).
---
no it's not.. they're doing an app for anyone that wants to make their own podcast and this is what it's going to be called..
Engadget the shit-disturber..? I think so..
A patent is NOT a trademark. What a stupid assertion.
And Apple should own "Podcast" too, as it's obviously a contraction of an Apple trademark. I imagine this is just a step in preserving their rights to that term.
I'm really sick of all the juvenile yammering when ever anyone tries to keep people from stealing their property. Why don't you all go back to stealing movies now, 'kay?
Actually, I think they are just registering the trademark before somebody else does. It'd be major egg on the face if somebody beat Apple to "iPodcast" regardless of Apple's own desire to come up with a product of that name anyway. Secondly, obtaining a trademark is a lot cheaper than legal shenanigans later on.
I noticed the "iPodcast Producer" software has become ePodCast and there's a few ipodcast domains already registered by other people than Apple, some fairly innocently, some otherwise.
weak!
This is some bad journalism, Engadget. I can't tell what's going on from reading the article. The first part of the article mentions a trademark registration, the second refers to it as a patent, prompting the "reporter" to wonder how many devices it will affect:
"Um is there anything that wouldnt fall under the rubric of that patent? Yikes."
Perhaps someone at Engadget would like to tell Barb the difference between trademarking the name of a potential product with a device patent. Overall, I think Engadget does a good job. But stories should illuminate issues, not confuse them. This ain't good.
Engadget: LOOK UP THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PATENT AND A TRADEMARK FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Apple is not trying to "patent" podcasts, or ipodcasts (whatever the hell those are). They are trying to TRADEMARK the term "ipodcast" which would mean that they would ahve the exclusive right to use the term "ipodcast" in the industries you list. THIS WOULD NOT HOWEVER mean that they would own the idea of a podcast (no one could own that anyway), and it would not mean they could sue people who podcasted. What it would mean is that if a podcaster called his podcast "ipodcast" they could sue maybe.
IN THE MEANTIME READ WHAT YOU WRITE. YOU SWITCHED FROM 'TRADEMARK' TO PATENT WITHOUT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT.
Well, looks like I wrote something fifteen other people wrote. In the meantime, fire Barb. She should not be writing about intellectual property issues if she doesn't know the difference between a patent and a trademark (and a copyright by the way, which she also always screws up).
yeah engadget..you suck!! you idiots are better off at copy/pasting from other sites than writing the articles yourselves.
agreed; Engadget, please get your ip law straight.
it begs the idiots to come out of hiding and argue.
"In the meantime, fire Barb." Hmm. About 20 overreactions to Barb's overreaction. This is a blog. One of the inherent problems with blogs is that sometimes the blogger posts something long before thinking it all the way through.
And she didn't write that the iPodcast filing was a *patent* application. She wrote that this *trademark* application contained language that she'd come to despire about *patent* applications, and that patents issued with that same language tended to be too broad. Unstated, but implied, is that similarly phrased trademarks would be similarly too broad.
But, yeah, it probably is, or will be, a software application. And Apple has ethically stable grounds on which to trademark it.
Even though Barb is clearly jut plain wrong, Ap*le is still fucking ghey. People like Rich Brome make me throw up all over myself.
iPodcast is a new iLife program (don't ask how i know).
I have not changed the post since putting it up. Thanks to san for actually reading it. If you're looking for news without any injected subtlety or opinion, you've got a plethora of other options.
How did this story get published? It's inaccurate, badly researched and lacks any sense of objectivity. If Engadget has any credibility it should be corrected immediately.
Barb Dybwad defends the confusing switch between the terms "trademark" and "patent" saying basically that these readers can go somewhere else for their news from now on, and either didn't read the article or are too stupid to appreciate her "subtlety." She also doesn't plan to change the article in any way to make it less confusing/misleading. This seems like an interesting way to treat confused readers.
I fail to catch the "subtlety" myself, considering Apple's simple, proper, legal, (and frankly a little boring and expected/predicted by many) trademark request prompted Ms. Dybwad to equate Apple with a "vast juggernaut of intellectual property imperialism" on the march.
Thats some kinda subtlety and nuance you've got there, Barb. Any more subtle and you'd be accusing Steve Jobs of war crimes. Sheesh.
me thinks software trademarks and patents are utterly useless and just slow down the actual development of software
Ok people, less caffine. It is a paragraph on a blog. It made me aware of something I wasn't aware of and drove me to find out more about it. The point of Blogs is to be interesting and up to date. That means staying on the bleeding edge of news and inevitably sometimes mistakes are made. They can be rectified. I don't quite see how anyone could suffer enormous hardship simply from reading this blog, but if you really did lose a leg or something by falling down an elevator shaft in shock after screaming "nooo, dear lord noooo, it is a trademark she means not a patent, nooooooo" then I am sorry. I really love the engadget site as the posts always seem interesting and the comments are always well thought out. Also I agree that stuff should be accurate. But chill everyone. One mistake out of how many thousand posts?
Chill. Become a Pastafarian. Good times.
"me thinks software trademarks and patents are utterly useless and just slow down the actual development of software"
that may qualify as one of the stupidest things i have ever read. Yes trademarks are dumb, everyone should be able to call their applications Windows or Linux... that would help out a lot.
This post is typical engadget patentphobia oozing here... plz this is only a trademark and every intelligent company would do the same thing.
And all you other people crying about patents and small companies - patents are the thing that give the small guy a chance against the big companies. If they come up with a really unique idea then they can patent it and no big company can take what they righfully own. If they were too stupid not to protect their intellectual property than they have no one to balme but themselves.
"And all you other people crying about patents and small companies - patents are the thing that give the small guy a chance against the big companies. If they come up with a really unique idea then they can patent it and no big company can take what they righfully own."
Ray: Can you name one single instance where a small software company or individual software developer was actually able to receive a patent and use it to their own advantage? Bonus points if the advantage was against a large company (MS, Apple, Sun, etc).
Regardless of whether this is off-topic or not, look at the way patents actually get *used* in the software industry in the real world. They stifle competition, slow innovation, and favor large companies who can afford to go through the legal and logistical nightmare of successfully filing for, and enforcing a patent.
However this does not mean that the patents they get are actually for original ideas -- often there is much prior art, but the USPTO is so inept and overworked that they can't (or won't) bother to do the research needed to find out about it, so many patents which are actually granted to big companies shouldn't be, and many others are allowed to be vastly over-broad.
I don't care if patents are *intended* to help the little guy. Intention is worth exactly nothing if that isn't what software patents actually *do*.
Last thing: I'm not an expert on other kinds of patents, but I'm willing to bet 10:1 odds that patents in many other industries have exactly the same problem.
Joel, if you're confused about the difference between a trademark and a patent, it's not my duty to educate you -- it's well beyond the scope of this post. I also find it a little bit odd that folks are so concerned about the difference between a "trademark" and a "patent" -- as if the two have no relation whatsoever. Yes, of course there is a bureaucratic difference -- but they serve incredibly similar functions to protect corporations in the marketplace. Why wouldn't it make sense to relate the two key pillars of intellectual property? It's as if the entire history of IP becomes invisibilized in your comments -- how naive are we, really? As Jake notes, neither trademarks nor patents are commonly used to defend the little company against the big -- rather, the other way around. It's the big companies who have the resources, the money and the clout to get the intellectual property rights AND defend them. Little companies are often too strapped.
I also find it funny that in half of my other posts I get accused of being an Apple fanboy (reclaiming the term boy, gender be damned). I love Apple and I love their products. It's no secret I'm an Apple fanboy! But I think this is ridiculous. Of course I'm aware it's likely product-centric -- Apple will put out some incredibly easy to use podcasting application or possibly hardware. I think that's great -- I'd love to see it, and I'd love to use it. But trademarks and patents both are about preventing other companies from doing similar things, and making similar products. That's bad -- lots of companies should be making podcasting tools and products. And when they do, they shouldn't have to expend exorbitant resources to fight off Apple in court, should Apple choose to "protect" its IP "rights" (which history would, if we're paying attention, tell us it will).
Since when did the word "pod" become Apple's word? That is like saying Photo is Apple's word just because they trademarked iphoto. As an itunes user with a broken ipod, this makes me realize what Apple is doing by trademarking ipodcast. They want to control podcasting. Now that we all use itunes for our podcast, why not make it so you can only play podcast downloaded by itunes on itunes or on the ipod line of products. Mac users love to critisize Microsoft about running a Monopoly, but where are the calls from Mac users to stop Apple from monopolizing the mp3 player market and soon to be podcast market. I really hate the fact that I can't play music I've purchased on anything other than an Apple product. But hey Mac fanatics keep those blinders on.
As a proud member of the EU it give me great pleasure in telling you to stick your Computer Patents up your ass!