There have been several interesting stories in the news lately about trademark disputes involving Apple’s new tablet product, the iPad. With the iPad coming out in less than a week, these disputes have finally been settled by Apple’s acquisition of the trademark registration to the name ‘iPad.’
To the surprise of many, the name of Apple’s newest product was already registered by Fujitsu, a Japanese company with a touch-screen Windows Mobile device named iPAD. This posed a large trademark infringement issue for Apply since the Fujitsu product is the most similar to the new Apple tablet and also is sold in the same market.
Fujitsu had their product name registered as a trademark from 2002 until 2009, but didn’t start attempting to renew the legal protection for their product name until mid-2009 (presumably after finding out about Apple’s new product). Apple filed challenges to the Fujitsu ownership of the trademark registration in September of last year. However, Fujitsu appeared to have substantial common law and legal claims to the ‘iPad’ name, as they had been producing and selling an ‘iPAD’ touch screen tablet since 2002.
Therefore, Apple determined the best way to avoid an issue was to spend some cold hard cash. The issue was settled when Apple purchased the ‘iPad’ trademark registration from Fujitsu for an undisclosed price.
Fujitsu’s windfall in this case provide an example of benefits that come with the legal ownership of a name. If Fujitsu didn’t have a legal claim to the ‘iPAD’ name in the form of a trademark, Apple may have preferred a lawsuit to purchasing the rights, and Fujitsu probably would not have been in a strong enough negotiating position to extract a hefty settlement.
To register a trademark today call Gerben Law Firm at 1-877-350-6275
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