Hacker News Reader

Comment by skawaii | Hacker News Reader

Finally! An American judge with some common sense!

Honestly, though, I think this is a good first step. I enjoy some Apple products, but I'll be more than happy to see them lose this. If they can trademark "app store", then what's next? They trademarks the term "app(s)", as well?

View on HN

I've found that copyright law often ends up working reasonably well.

It is important to note that copyright law and trademark law, while both considered "intellectual property", differ quite a bit. Copyright was originally enacted to "promote the progress", while trademark law is intended to protect consumers (to be brief). Further, trademarks are enforced as long as the owner of the mark continues to defend it, while copyrights last _only_ 70 years after the death of the author.

EDIT: Grammar, and to add that what I've written is only the tip of the iceberg as to how these concepts differ in law.

They trademarked "280".

This is not true.

They trademarked a very specific icon which happens to contain the digits 2, 8, and 0 in that order. (If you have an iOS device, it is your "Maps" icon.)

They did not trademark "280".

A bit of history: when AMD and Cyrix started gaining market share selling their x86 chips, Intel went to court to try to trademark "486" and failed, so the 586 became Pentium.

If the drug company that made the morning after birth control drug had not been able tom trademark RU-486, I wonder ifbtheymwould have called it Preventium?

There's a similar story that the Porsche 911 was originally going to be called 901, but that Peugeot had claimed all 3-digit numbers with a zero in the middle and forced Porsche to rename their model.

link?

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/06/apple-obtains-u-s-trademark...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com