Trademark

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is a big fan of typography. Before dropping out of Reed College and starting Apple, Jobs took a calligraphy class that he's since attributed to the inclusion of various fonts that are a part of the Mac OS. As it turns out, Microsoft is pretty interested in fonts, too, so much in fact, that font size has become a point of contention in the legal spat between the two companies over Apple's attempts at trademarking the term "App Store" as its own.

In a motion filed this morning with the … Read more

Apple is defending its effort to trademark the phrase "App Store" against a Microsoft challenge, arguing the term is no more generic than the software giant's trademarked "Windows."

Apple applied for the trademark in 2008, prompting a challenge by Microsoft, which contended the phrase is too generic to register and would restrict competitors' ability to describe their own services. In a filing (PDF) yesterday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple asked that the challenge be dismissed and pointed out that one of Microsoft's most prominent trademarks has also been challenged as … Read more

Apple's effort to trademark the name "App Store" has run in to opposition from Microsoft, which argues the phrase is too generic to register and would restrict competitors' ability to use of the term to describe their own services.

A week after Apple launched its App Store for iPhone apps in 2008, the company applied for a trademark for "app store," a retail store offering "services featuring computer software provided via the internet and other computer and electronic communication networks," as well as other services, according to its application with the U.S. … Read more

eBay has won the latest and seemingly last round in a lawsuit filed by jewelery maker Tiffany over alleged trademark infringement.

The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday refused to hear an appeal filed by Tiffany over a 2008 court decision that found in favor of eBay in a trademark infringement lawsuit.

Initially filed in 2004, the suit from Tiffany alleged that eBay should be held liable for any trademark infringement from the sale of phony goods on the auction site. But in a July 2008 ruling, a U.S. District Court found that trademark law could not be used to … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Acer unveils a dual touchscreen laptop called the Iconia

Angry Birds, the popular mobile phone game, will come to a game console near you sometime next year

The U.S. military launches its own version of YouTube called MilTube

Microsoft revamps Bing Movies

Microsoft and Southwest Airlines are bringing Santa to an airport gate near you for picture time

A new social network for readers called Copia launched this week

Facebook is close to scoring a trademark for the word "face"

Whenever you say "It's on like Donkey Kong," going forward, be sure to thank Nintendo.

The game company announced today that it has requested a trademark for the phrase from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Nintendo said its trademark application is "in honor" of the upcoming launch of Donkey Kong Country Returns on November 21.

As Nintendo pointed out in its announcement, "it's on like Donkey Kong" has been around since at least the early 1990s, the original Donkey Kong having launched in 1981, and has been uttered "in … Read more

After an extended negotiation process between Internet giant Google and Aussie online start-up Groggle, the two have reached a settlement that has involved Groggle changing its name to Drinkle.

Groggle founder Cameron Collie told ZDNet Australia that after a six-month negotiation period, the two companies have reached a settlement with undisclosed terms that has Groggle relinquishing its domain names and trademarks to Google and moving to a new Drinkle.com domain.

"The site will be exactly as it was before but just with a new brand name," he said of the price-comparison site for alcohol. "It's … Read more

Get this one: A site called "Lamebook" that mocks bad and silly Facebook content had been threatened with a trademark infringement lawsuit from Facebook, so it decided to sue Facebook first. It may sound silly, but Lamebook's rationale is that it's a very obvious parody and hence is protected by the First Amendment.

"Unlike the Facebook website, the Lamebook website does not offer social-networking services or functionality to its users and, therefore, does not compete with Facebook," the complaint explained, adding that Facebook's repeated threats of a lawsuit began in March.

Facebook has, … Read more

A trademark lawsuit filed against Apple by a Web advertising firm over the term "iAds" was quietly settled in July.

No one has disclosed exactly how the case was resolved but Apple now owns the "iAds" trademark, and last week a company peripherally involved in the suit posted a note to the Web that said Apple paid a "seven-figure settlement."

At Apple's iOS 4 event on April 8, CEO Steve Jobs announced Apple's iAds program. A month later, Innovate Media, an online ad agency headquartered near Los Angeles, filed a trademark suit … Read more