Apple accused of harassing an air purifier company
By Nilay Patel 
posted January 26th 2008 6:01AM
posted January 26th 2008 6:01AM
It's no secret that Apple Legal is, ah, aggressive when it comes to protecting its various fruit-flavored intellectual property, but a company called BlueAir just filed a lawsuit accusing Apple's lawyers of outright harassment over BlueAir's AirPOD air purifier, pictured at right. Seems BlueAir has been trying to register a trademark on the product, and instead of filing an opposition with the USPTO based on consumer confusion with the iPod, Apple's attorneys have just been sending BlueAir angry letters and threatening massive legal fees. Of course, that's pretty much what lawyers do, but BlueAir's asked the court to step in and rule definitively on the subject before pursuing their trademark application any further. Seeing how protective Apple's been of the "-pod" suffix in the past, that could lead to some interesting rulings -- we'll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.Disclaimer: Although Nilay is an attorney, super guy, and snappy dresser, he's not your attorney, and this post is not legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such.
That, my friend, is the most idiotic thing I've read today. Granted, I just woke up an hour ago, but hey.
Anyway, guess where hp got the "i" for the iPaq from?
Could it be from a wildly popular fruity colored all-in-one computer that a certain fruit-named company released 2 years before the iPaq was introduced?
I appreciate that 'rawhead' was being a bit facetious, however I think it's sad that we live in a world where companies can't call their products anything without checking whether or not some company is going to sue their asses.
In other news, major corporations are suing the English dictionary for publication of all words beginning with any letter.
OK, I am a lawyer, and unlike our snappy dresser Nilay I'm willing to do a little bit of legal analysis.
The main consideration in trademark disputes is whether there will be a likelihood of confusion on the part of the consumer. Simply put, Apple doesn't have a good case. No one in their right mind is going to think that Apple has decided to branch out into the air purifier business.
On the other hand, the purifier does bear a passing resemblance to the iPod. But that's it. Unless it also plays music or something, this case is pretty much dead in the water.
(I'm not your attorney and that bit of Trademark 101 legal analysis did not form any kind of attorney-client relationship between me and you.)
I actually think Apple has a pretty viable trademark dilution case, but I think the real story here is the insane procedural angle -- why is BlueAir filing for a declaratory judgement? Why didn't Apple start with an opposition before the TTAB? Crazy all around.
I disagree, it's a very good game, but i think Donkey Kong is the best game ever.
Haha that reminds me... we were in a store at a mall, and one of my friends saw some massage chair called like the iComfort or something and he said, surprised, "Apple makes CHAIRS?" He was serious. I almost hit him over the head.
...and if anyone does confuse the air purifier for an iPod, they deserve to have their head whacked with one of the fan blades. Now pardon me while I go off myself since XM is playing "Bubbly" on every possible channel
.......no comment.
No reply...
Can the BlueAir guy's really be upset about this? Apple suing BlueAir is the best PR they could have ever hoped for. I for one wouldn't have given more than a glance at this topic had it just been about an ugly ass air purifier.
Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem.
HAL: You know what the problem is as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: There are some attorneys here from Cupertino, Dave....
You are, Sir, a genius.
I swear to god, I don't think there's any collection of people on earth who respect originality less than the people who post on these sites. You're defending this company? Really? It looks like a giant fucking iPod and it's called the AirPOD. How can Apple not take legal action?
respect originality, and you're on apple's side? oh the irony.
It's a bloody AIR PURIFIER!
It's four feet tall. it's covered in baroque florwry somethings. It has a passing similarity in shape to the ipod, in that they are both rectangular.
A lawyer's already said they have no case. And so what it's called AirPOD? Noone buys things because they contain POD therefore may bet the next gen apple product never mind it's huge and has fans and things and is in the section next to the fridges.
In Related News: Apple register patents on anything that has two circles in a geometric concentric pattern. Also develop nuclear weapons, say "will use pre-emptively" on anyone foolhardy enough to even consider putting a square shape on top of said circular thing.
Can we have some sanity here please?
You clearly don't understand how this type of thing works. Band-Aid, was at one time a name brand, not a generic descriptor. Asprin, was at one time a name brand, not a generic descriptor. Both companies lost the rights to those words because they didn't defend them enough. One day somebody is making a thing called the AirPOD, the next every MP3 player on the planet is simply called a POD, and Apple loses all the equity they put into creating one of the most recognized brands in the world.
Band-Aid and Hoover became genericised because they were trademarks which were used to mean anything of the sort by the general public, and thus when someone said Hoover they didn't mean something made by the hoover company, but rather a vacuum cleaner.
Bayer lost numerous battles in court over aspirin and then had to give up the worldwide patent on Aspirin production and purification methods (nothing to do with the name) as part of Axis war reparations vis-a-vis the Treaty of Versailles.
Noone here is confusing the purifier as made by apple, using iPod as generic, thinkng that AirPOD and iPod are in any way related, or anything of the sort. The name doesn't impact on apple at all. It's an entirely different scenario to those you name.
How the hell can you jump from an air conditioner to every mp3 player being called ipod and the trademark becoming genericised?
Sanity i said...
Maybe Nillay should just give up his JD to avoid putting that disclaimer at the bottom of every remotely-legal-sounding post.
You're right, I should totally give up my degree and career because that one-sentence disclaimer is bothering you.
jeez, /sarcasm man.
I just thought it was amusing that you had to put a disclaimer on. Not to mention the fact that you are creating some of the more 'interesting' disclaimers I've seen.
...super guy, and snappy dresser.
this is bull.
Apple is a bit out of hand with this!
In the English language, "pod" has been the Greek-derived suffix (as in "πoδ") meaning "foot", and has been in common usage since at least the seventeenth century. If anyone should be sued, it's Apple, for tyring to trademark something like a suffix with tons of prior art: tetrapod, hexapod, epipod, gnathopod, mesopod, ...)
Don't even get me started about the "i" part!
i here that Steve Jobs is suing a prostitute in Atlantic City for selling blow jobs and hand jobs. Maybe it's because she was using an iPod at the time.
While I do think that Apple is maybe a bit overzealous in the legal department, you have to look at it from their perspective. The AirPOD is OBVIOUSLY trying to capitalize on the iPOD's popularity. I mean, the design itself was intentionally made to resemble an iPOD.
With that said, we must also consider that Apple is known for selling quality products. If they allowed every company out there looking to make a quick buck with no regard to quality to rip off their designs, people might stop thinking that Apple sells quality products. We may know that the two are not related in any way but will your average soccer mom? How about a busy executive that is about as tech-savvy as my grandmother? These people still buy tons of electronics (usually whatever is popular). Can anybody vouch for the quality of an AirPOD? I certainly can't.
maybe apples legal dept show go after that portable container rental company named pods while their at it!
Pod eh! I thing that BlueAir did the right thing here. Apple wants to control any use of the word Pod. Air purifier, mp3 player, speaker. Yes, at least I would like to know the result of this.
I was going to tradmark CockPOD but then I got a letter from Apple letting me know that Steve Jobs has that covered and that if I persued things further they'd be foreced tob e total dicks about it.
Apple should sue them for trade dress infringement -- the name _and_ the whole product design is derivative of the iPod.
Also, I bought a ChargePOD from a company called CallPOD...why are they kosher?
as far as I'm concerned, they are in two completely seperate markets (aside of course from the fact that they are both electronic's and for consumers.)
I expect Apple to issue an apology any day now.
Apple has to. For future cases.
Patents are to protect innovators. BUT trademarks laws are there to protect consumers from confusion. If trademark owners didn't sent consistent messages to protect it, the trademark looses its power and the owner won't have a case. So, once Pods and Air gets used everywhere in electronics, and Apple didn't defend against them, then, one can make an AirPod music player that looks like an iPod, and Apple would have no case.
Xerox still places ads from time to time with a message to stop people from calling copies as Xerox ( even though they loved it ). Yes, against us calling a piece of paper. Same goes with Kleenex with ad messages that tissues aren't Kleenex.
You're quite incorrect.
#1. No company other than Johnson & Johnson, the owners of the Band-Aid brand, can call their adhesive bandages Band-Aids.
#2. Although Bayer, a German based company, applied for a patent on the Asprin name in Germany, they were denied on the grounds of lack of novelty. They later obtained a patent in Britain, which was invalidated when they went after another company that was able to show prior art predating Bayers patent. They then obtained a patent in the US, which was actually upheld by the US courts, and caused asprin to be ridiculously expensive in the US compared to any other country. However, this was lost in the aftermath of WWII, when German assets were siezed and resold. Another company managed to purchase the rights to the name. However, by then the world was flooded with different brands of asprin, and the courts ended up ruling it as a generalized trademark. In short: this is far more complicated than a lack of defence (particularly since they DID try to defend it).
Hmmm. Above post was supposed to be reply to squirgle...
most of you are missing the fact that this airpod actually looks like an ipod.
This is just them protecting their "Pod" franchise. If someone were to try and build an iPod rip-off, Apple has to justify to the courts that they have defended it in the past. You can't let every Tom, Dick and Harry use your product's name, or likeness thereof and expect to win in the courts when someone gets "a little too close". This is common legal practice. Apple gets alot of flack over this because they are the company people love to talk about regarding this. Remember the iPhone debacle? Linksys pretty much never advertised their iPhone (that they purchased instead of developing anyhow), and even though the two products were completely different, and Linksys' iPhone would have came out ahead from the free publicity, they still made a stink with Apple over it. Yes they had the same name, so it's not the same thing, but if Apple pushed hard enough, they would have cleaned up Linksys in this case because they never defended it in the past.
As one lawyer to another, please, please STOP with the disclaimers whenever you write an article that touches on a news item that may contain the words "legal" "court" or "lawyers". There is no legal advice in this posting or, indeed, any of your other posts.
This is just pathetic (and oh-so American).