Tag: TRADEMARK

Amazon launched its own Android app store today, despite facing legal challenges from Apple. The Amazon Appstore will provide a new way for Android users to purchase apps for their mobile and tablet devices, while offering a few features unique to Amazon. Because the online retailer already enjoys a strong consumer base, Amazon will be able to integrate its own marketing and recommendation ...

Nintendo's anticipated 'Donkey Kong Country Returns' finally lands on November, 21st, but the company is commemorating the launch early with an incredibly atypical publicity maneuver. Despite Nintendo's beloved reputation as an unconventional and fan-friendly entity, it reportedly intends to trademark and protect a quirky piece of pop culture. According to CNN, Nintendo hopes to trademark the ...

Score one for intellectual property and the closing of linguistic expression! Apple has been awarded a trademark for the phrase "there's an app for that" to the chagrin of unimaginative competitors and poor parodists. (Yes, we did it, too.) Just as Facebook has been trying to protect its brand from any company using either "face" or "book" in its name, Apple seems to think that anyone employing ...

Facebook has filed suit against Teachbook.com, claiming that the educators' social network has violated Facebook's trademark. At the heart of the suit are several claims, the most obvious being the latter website's use of "book" in its name. Also at issue, though, are Teachbook's attempts to trademark its own name, and its purported tendency to describe itself as "Facebook for teachers." (We ...

Father Luke Strand thinks it is a great idea to drive around Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in a VW Beetle with stickers that look exactly like those on Best Buy's Geek Squad cars, except for one thing: his stickers read "God Squad." Best Buy didn't find this to be cute, but instead a violation of its trademark -- one that, by precedent, it couldn't treat any differently from any other violation. ...

What began as an innocent bar-room hypothetical conversation soon became a reality -- and now, it's become the centerpiece of a brewing legal storm. Back in April, journalists Matthew Honan, Sarah Rich and Alexis Madrigal were drinking together at a San Francisco bar, when they suddenly found themselves wondering about whether it'd be possible to start a new magazine over the course of a ...

Apple is developing a knack for ignoring products already on the market, and picking whatever name they choose. Back in 2007, it was the iPhone, which shared its name with (or, robbed its name from) a VoIP handset sold by Cisco Systems. Those two companies eventually reached a settlement allowing Apple to use the name, and, now, with the release of the iPad, the Cupertino lawyers will have to go ...

If it looks like a BBC app, reads like a BBC app, and quacks like a BBC app, proverbial logic would dictate that it's gotta be a real BBC app, right? Well.... AdAge reports today about a new swarm of paid iPhone apps that market themselves as "readers" for newspapers and media outlets like the New York Times and the BBC, even though they aren't actually affiliated with or officially licensed ...

High-end jeweler Cartier garnered itself a bit of (perhaps unwanted) attention this past weekend when it filed a trademark infringement suit regarding a small time iPhone app developer -- Digitopolis Game Studio. The company created a pair of apps, called Fake Watch and Fake Watch Gold Edition, which featured recreations of Cartier's "Tank" watch. Oddly enough, Cartier didn't sue Digitopolis, but ...

We really love it when people make outrageous claims that they, for example, own the trademark for an emoticon. Oleg Teterin, a Russian businessman and owner of Superfone (a mobile ad company), has trademarked the wink emoticon, ;-). Teterin says he has no intentions of going after individual users, but that he wants businesses to understand they will not get away with using his trademarked ...

New York -- 'The Big Apple' -- has filed for a trademark for it's new GreeNYC logo that is being plastered on the city's new hybrid taxis and buses. Thats the logo above, the infinity sign as an apple, with stem and leaf. Next to that is the Apple (formerly Apple Computers) logo. The silver apple shape with a leaf and a bite taken out of it. Apple thinks the GreeNYC logo is a bit too similar to ...