Apple Lost An IP Case To Myspace. Wait, What?
posted in: Music News
Seems that Apple, interested in shoring up as much intellectual property as they possibly could, tried to trademark their Music player icon, that orange box to the left. But their efforts were for naught as another tech company had already beaten them to the punch, trademarking a similar icon. Egads! Who were the nefarious corporate saboteurs behind this? Perhaps Samsung, taking pot shots in response to their continued legal pounding at the hands of the iPhone makers? Or maybe Google, one of Apple’s adversaries in the patent wars?
Nope. According to GigaOM, it was Myspace. Myspace. Huh.
Between that pretty awesome trailer for their upcoming relaunch and this, Myspace is grabbing more headlines at the moment then they have in years.They’re having a hell of a week, huh? And when was the last time those words were written?!
Some background on the case: the current registrant for the music icon trademark that Apple was vying for was originally owned by iLike, an early music downloading and sharing service. iLike was purchased, along with their trademarks including the icon at the heart of the case to the right, by Myspace back in 2009. Though the music service eventually went belly up, Myspace continued to chug along through lean years. Then Myspace met Justin Timberlake and now everything seems to be looking up for them.
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board rejected Apple’s argument that no one has ever confused the two icons during use. However, the board still found that, “[the music icon] marks are similar, the goods and services are related and are encountered by the same classes of consumers,” hence their decision and hence the delightful irony that Apple managed to be trumped in the realm of intellectual property by Myspace. Myspace, of all people!
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