Sure, we're as sensitive to
brand rights issues as the next guy, but it seems like Apple might be going a bit too far on this one. Apparently a small company named Mach 5 is stepping on their toes with a new "Profit Pod" device that can track arcade machines for money put in and tickets spat out, and then wirelessly transmit the information to a PDA or notebook computer. It sounds like a boon for arcade owners, who won't have to manually inspect each machine, but Apple seems to think differently. "We believe there is confusing similarity between Apple's
IPOD mark and the PROFIT POD mark," says a recent letter from Apple legal to Mach 5. They go on to say: "we must ask that Mach 5 Products immediately abandon the pending application for PROFIT POD, agree to cease all use of the PROFIT POD." Apple seems to think the word "Pod," plus the similar functionality of transmitting data to a computer, use with video games, and the fact that, in their words, "the PROFIT POD product is a small, flat, round corned rectangular device with a display screen," (see picture above), make the Profit Pod a threat to that nifty brand name of theirs.`We wouldn't call it an iPod killer
per se, but maybe these Mach 5 folks are on to something.
[Via
Techdirt]
posted Aug 14th 2006 4:01PM
Ha! Their industrial design is terrible, compared to Apple's. Nice try, but like any other POS I think I'll have to pass.
(I kid, I kid)
does it play MP3's???
I guess the only thing they learned from being sued by Apple Corps was not to be the little guy.
Jerks
I don't like to do this to you guys, but this is the 2nd or 3rd post I've seen today that I saw a day or two prior on Ars Technica.
Aggressively defending your trademarks is one thing, but this is just asinine. Come on, Apple: People are stupid, but not THAT stupid. No one will look at that hideous italicized logotype and think of an Apple digital music player, I assure you.
Well, to be fair, in Apple's eyes iPod == Profit Pod
I'm a fan of apple and I must say that this is rediculous, It doesn't even have anything to do with music, not to mention the fact that there is no way someone would confuse to 2.
What next sueing farmers growing Peas
really disapointing but mabey it's like that girl requesting info and got a nasty letter a couple of months back and this is just some brainless legal intern's work.
"It sounds like a boon for arcade owners, who won't have to manually inspect each machine, but Apple seems to think differently."
haha, isn't it "think different"?
If I were Mach 5, I'd trace a picture of my hand giving the middle finger over the top of the letter and mail it back along with the "Po" page from the dictionary that has "pod" on it.
In other news, grocery stores everywhere receive cease and desist orders from Apple for selling the popular fruit carrying a similar name and image.
if you do not actively protect your patents, you loose the right to protect it later.
I'm not saying this makes any sense, but according to patent law, NOT going after these guys may set a precedent that would bite Apple in the butt later. (keeping them for protecting their patents against legitimate infringements down the road.)
You'd have to verify that with a patent lawyer, but i'm pretty sure that it works like that.
... this is still pretty silly.
The shoe is on the other foot now...didn't they just conclude their own legal problems with Apple Records? It would be funny if Line 6 (maker of the POD guitar effects device) went after Apple for trademark infringement....
I'm an Apple fan as well, but this is just ridiculous. I wonder if the guys over at Line 6 ever thought about going after Apple for using "Pod"? After all their product was out before the iPod and it is a "music" device.
http://www.line6.com/products/pods/
iPod = (i, because why not?) Portable On Demand
In case anyone cares to know...
Sue them for a non-music device, yet the iRiver stands?
HAH!
This is so fucking rediculous. No wonder there are a lot of Apple haters out there. Apple thinks it owns the world with their Ipoos. I mean how does this product present any threat to Apple? But Apple is so paranoid as a company that they will go after anything and anyone that come remotely resembling the Ipoo in anyway shape or form. It's stupid incident like this that makes Apple looks like a dictatorial regime in the world of business.
Or it could be that a computer program runs off matches of potentially infringing devices and some one failed to really read what it's about.
Brilliant strategy for Mach 5. Build a device, throw the name "pod" on it and let Apple's lawyers take care of your marketing/advertizing. Without spending a penny, pictures and descriptions of their product are getting picked up by various news/blog sites.
John, you have an awesome point there. that would completely make my day if Line6 sent Apple a similar letter...
Yeah, they sent me a mean email back in the day over the 'style' of a theme hosted by my website. They thought it looked too much like thier OS X. After a brief call to their lawyers, I explained that they didn't own the rights to my website & I'd post whatever I wanted there. Their threats were all empty, no further communication from them was received. It is just an idle threat, I'd say.
does it play ogg?
...even the lawyers must think this is stupid. Apple didn't invent the 'pod' or the circle.
Next thing you know google wont let you use google it anymore.
oh wait...
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2162290/stop-googling-things-google
Jeff, patent != trademark. Apple's logo and the iPod brand are trademarked.
-p-
This does seem ridiculous.
Of course, based on my extremely limited knowledge of patent law, it seems that if you do not defend your trademark aggressively, it becomes public domain, and the trademark is gone. The problem is that no lawyer or court will tell any company (and this is not just an Apple issue) what the limit is, where aggressive defense becomes ridiculous. Some companies, Apple included IMO, therefore go overboard just to be safe and defend trademarks of high-profit items. They're willing to trade negative publicity for safety of their trademark.
@tehshitz
"mail it back along with the "Po" page from the dictionary that has "pod" on it."
Genius. Absolutely genius. I want to do this.
Does this mean that crappy alterna-metal band P.O.D can expect an injunction any day now?
that Google article proves my point. (TM, not patent, that was a typo on my part. sorry.)
"It has happened to once-trademarked products including yo-yo, trampoline and nylon. Trademark lawyers call it 'genericide'."
you can LOSE the right to defend your trademarks if you do not protect them.
Should the U.S. Postal Service sue Apple for infringing use of the name "Mail" for their e-mail application especially since it boundaries on a similar line of business. Maybe H.G. Wells foundation will sue over the name "Time Machine"? How about "Safari", "Preview", "Spaces", "Calculator", etc.?
Geez...ironic that its usually the Mac fanatics that throw stones at Microsoft for be the big corporate thug!
Loque, the iRiver brand preceeds the iPod brand.
Clearly Apple Corporate Lawyers should be spending more time administering correctly their internal shop re Apple Share Options and less time dumping on another company's reasonable use of the word "pod" in a product description.
Hey Apple, don't forget to sue the bands POD or the site www.pods.com, makers of tripods, and the site trypodnetwork.com.
That's the most innocuous threat to Apple's trademark. What's with this "i" prefix on everything? Shouldn't that be brought to their attention!?
Chris, I assume you know this already, but none of those things are trademarked, whereas iPod is, so the argument doesn't really make any sense. If Apple's mail program was called Fedex, for example, that'd be a different story. Still, I think it's pretty easy for Apple to argue that they can reserve their trademark on pod in a consumer electronics setting without having it entirely stricken from the dictionary.
I always thought the "iPod" name was a ripoff since it came a year after the "iPAQ," which was a Compaq desktop line which shared its name with a very successful Pocket PC line. A portable audio player is very similar to a PDA too...I don't know if Compaq/HP worked something out with Apple, but it seems like they should've gotten some money for that name.
iPAQ=2000, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipaq
iPod=2001, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod
Wait… the company’s name is “Mach 5”, and Apple is getting their panties bunched up over the word POD. Someone better call Speed Racer, and tell him to get his lawyers on top of this problem.
The word POD is in the dictionary, it is a noun – meaning; “An elongated seed vessel of a leguminous plant such as the pea, splitting open on both sides when ripe”. You CANNOT copyright a noun in the English Language, no matter how much of a lexicon it has become. This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard… inside of a week, and it ONLY Monday.
Oh no.. I can't escape in my escapepod... apple has sued the shuttle and removed all escapepods.. NOOOO
Fcukers
Oh dear Ah-poo,
1.) Don't forget to sue all the publishers of dictionaries for having a "Po" page (or an "i" for that matter). OHnooooo~ ah-poo is going to sue EVERYONE who calls themselves "i" from now on, so be carefuLofSh*t!
2.) Here is also the page from the dictionary containing words begining with "Ho," as in HOG (or just HO)!
R i d i c u l o u S h i t !!!
Hey Hey! Sega did the pod thing too!
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Misc/SegaPods.htm
This Apple lawsuit should be entitled: iDIOCY. Only an iGNORANT iDIOT would defend this action.
That's such crap. I'm starting to really hate Apple.
How come they sue Mach 5, when I see infomercials with 'i' in front of everything? iPastaStrainer, iMugWarmer, iShoe, ect...
What about Ween's THE POD?... They had it first!
BOOGNISH FOREVER!
Finally, the hammer in the coffin. I'm definitely getting a Zune now. Apple, you have fallen far from the tree.
Ha, and everyone says MS is evil. MS owns numerous patents and rarely sues or even notifies about infringment. :P
And yeah, this is crazy. It's not even the same type of device, and in no way a thread to the iPod. I'd been thinking about getting a MacBook for a while but things like this turn me more towards what I know best.
What is the big deal here...that it's apple or that it's about such an unrelated device? This sort of thing go on all of the time, but aren't made public. Letters from corporate lawyers are not the same as lawsuits and do not necessarily mean that one will happen either.
(1) Anyway, if you think this is ridiculous, you should look into how vigorously the USOC and IOC defend their trademark rights to the word "Olympic". That is some seriously heavy handed trademark protection.
(2) Anyone that let's this determine what product they buy is a ignoramus...or had made their decision already but just found this a convenient excuse. I'm all for supporting corporations that have a positive social impact, and shunning those that don't. But it seems quite hypocritical to make this an issue while actively buying products from Microsoft, Intell, AMD, Dell, IBM...etc...etc...etc.
"You CANNOT copyright a noun in the English Language, no matter how much of a lexicon it has become."
Like someone already mentioned, it's not copyright law we're dealing with. This is a trademark issue, and trademarks have to be strigently defended.
Trademark law specifically states that if a trademark holder does not when they had reasonable knowledge of the potential infringement then they lose all rights to the trademark, which becomes public domain property.
The problem is that, unlike Copyright and Patent law, Trademark law never defines what qualifies as 'similar,' more or less forcing a C&D on any usage whatsoever or face the possibility of a Judge deciding that it's not theirs anymore.
Jeff Foster and stens are absolutely correct here: current trademark law virtually DEMANDS that Apple and other companies "overreach" on their infringement claims and aggressively defend their brands. Failing to do so could be disastrous by transforming a valuable brand into a generic mark that anyone could profit from. "A generic mark forms part of the public domain and can be commercially exploited by anyone" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genericized_trademark in the "Legal Concepts" section).
Cartainly no sane person will confuse the "Profit Pod" with an Apple iPod, but every time Apple (or any other company) fails to defend its brand is one step closer they are to losing it.
I doubt Apple even cares to win this suit (and likely knows it won't). It is the fight that matters. The more ubiquitous the brand (iPod is nearly generic in common use) the more aggresively a company needs to defend even tangentally smilar names such as this.
Don't bash Apple for the legal world they live in.
@scwtte: I thought that everyone knew that the "iPAQ" was a shameless rip on the iMac, which came out 2 years prior to Compaq naming a like of desktop computers "iPAQ", and later making iPAQ PDAs as well.
I'm surprised Line 6 isn't suing Apple. They used the name first.
meh..no ogg support, no fm receiver...next.
Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL.
(Doh! Lawsuit on its way)
For one thing, there's a lot of other things with the name pod in it. I think vegetables everywhere should rise up and sue apple. I mean, I'm sure Pea Pods were out way before the iPod. Sure, they only come in one color, but which one can save your life?! The peas!
Another thing.. don't most redemption machines already keep track of that for you?!
First they trademark Apple, now Pod...what's next, milk? badumdum.
Seriously though...I'll be here all week. Don't forget your waiters and waitresses...
First, don't most systems nowadays have this built in.
Second, vegetables of the world should sue Apple. Pea Pods have been around for many many years, so I'd say they have more right to the name.
"The legal campaign, which in recent days has drawn challenges to products with names such as Profit Pod and TightPod, reflects a broader attempt by some of the most successful consumer technology companies to prevent their best-known product names slipping into common usage beyond their control."
you are so damn yellow, Engadget. I'm starting to think you purposely post only pieces of the story as Flame Bait for advertising revenue, and i'm noticing more an more that it's the Apple stories you choose to withhold pertinent info to try and demonize them (because you know that'll get the mac fanboys out.)
for shit's sake, Engadget, have some integrity. this flame baiting is getting really old.
Practically everyone I have seen here mention the protection of trademark is why Apple needs to do this is actually not well-versed in TM law and have provided misinformation.
First, let me explain the difference betwen ™ and ®. You use the ™ symbol when you have submitted your trademark application. Once the trademark is approved and registered you can begin using the ® symbol. Now, Apple has trademarked the iPod™ brand, not the word Pod. I would assume that the application has been accepted and they can be using the ® symbol. Now to keep the term from becoming generic usage and lose the trademark they must:
- use the symbol with the iPod term
- advertise to keep the public aware that iPod is a brand and not a generic name for a DAP
- send letters out to people/businesses who abuse the trademark.
Check out the website for the iPod (http://www.apple.com/ipod/) and you can see they are doing a very poor job of point one. How many trademark symbols do you see? As for advertising to keep the brand name from becoming generically used for DAP players I am not sure, as I do not pay attention to their ads. Abuse of the trademark is when the person or business is using the iPod name without the appropriate trademark symbol or even as a description of their own product. When this happens the company owner of the trademark must send a letter to the abusing person/company to inform them of the abusive use. Faliure to send this letter implies consent of their uisage.
Mach 5's product and name do not qualify for abuse as it is not using the iPod name and it is not a DAP. So, yes this is completely out of line for Apple.
I didn't realize the iMac was so old. Then I suppose the question is how Compaq got away with the similar naming back then?
Oh... I forgot to mention that Mach 5 submitted their "Profit Pod" trademark 7 months before Apple did the "iPod" mark.
Mach 5
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=2om4rp.8.1
Apple
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=2om4rp.6.2
They soooooooo don't know the word "pod"... UNLESS, it's a device that downloads music and has the word "pod" in it-- like, MusiPod. That would be a legitmate defense because it's so close to the original device, but if there's a coffee maker named JavaPod (if it's shaped in a capsule-type), then that's a whole different story! ;-)
Sorry, replace the word "know" w/ the word own.
It's like those store private brand soft drinks (made by crappy Cott Corp.) having their own versions of Dr. Pepper, but not using the word "Pepper" in it (but using the word "Dr." or "Doctor" in it, such as Dr. Zip or whatever).
There is no 'e' in ridiculous! If you can't spell, maybe try an easier word such as: shameful, absurd, stupid or insane. Please note that no trademark searches were performed on the aforementioned words.
David; rubbish.
iPod = "a word that Apple made up". Stop pulling backronyms out of your proverbial.
LOL This is so funny! First we have Apple getting sued by such companies as "Tiger Direct", "Tiger Balm" and many many others. Then I just came from an article where a lady who was selling a laptop bag for over 4 yrs called Tight Pod got approached by some Apple Lawyer (Professional Liar) and was told to cease and desist or else. She said no, so they offered to pay her to change it when they found out she had a trademark on "Tight Pod"! She could have just as easily have threatened Apple with a lawsuit. Too funny!
But mainly I would say that these are all obvious bloopers Apple and so many other American Corporations are making like Microsoft with several Linux Distros, PCLinuxOS, Alinux, Linspire ecetera and so forth.
Apple although was for awhile making gains on MacIntels, but with all the negative press Steven Jobs is getting lately it's liable cut into any new sales deeply worldwide. His arrogance can be very annoying and puts him amongst some very unflattering company with the likes of RIAA in suiing their own potential customers! Wonder Why no iMacs or Music CDs are selling? The Owners need only look in the mirror! This is no way to sell your product! ;D
And I hear they are going after George Lucas about Pod racing too . . .