Crabby apples
Today in London, Apple computer defends its trademark against Apple Corps, Ltd, a British music company. Apple Corps, Ltd is owned by the remaining Beatles, George Harrison's estate and Yoko Ono. Apple music contends that Apple computer has violated the terms of a 1991 agreement in which Apple Computer agreed to limit its music business. Apple has sold 14 million iPods already and the iTunes music store is more popular than the Dummy book series in the Bush White House.
The heart of this disagreement is the business overlap of music. Trademark law allows multiple uses of the same name as long as there's no confusion. Computers and music didn't appear to intersect 30 years ago--they do now.
Technology is the culprit. It's a lot harder for a company to specialize narrowly enough today to guarantee that they'll never overlap into someone else's business area. If that someone else uses the same name, you have a far distant collision in the not-so-soon future.
The other problem is that the Internet gives everybody the same backyard. It's too easy to view every sizable company as global, reducing the effectiveness of the argument that there would be no market confusion because they don't overlap.
The solution in the digital age is to pick a name that's made up, preferably with an umlaut or something. That's why you have Accenture and Fruszen Gladje, Compaqs and Frisbees. Any IP lawyer will tell you that that's the best naming solution. Of course, you can also use the poor man's Intellectual Property lawyer, the Domain Name System. If the name is free, than it's almost certainly trademarkable.
Posted on March 29, 2006
