By Jo Best, 6 January 2006 16:10
NEWS
A German tech company has found itself on the receiving end of legal action by Apple over the word 'spod'.
The company behind iTunes has filed a preliminary action in a Hamburg court against Liquid Air Tab, the company behind Spodradio, a service which allows users to download podcasts to their Nokia mobiles.
Apple's suit concerns the rights to both 'Spodradio' and 'spod', which are used as dot-com URLs by Liquid Air Tab.
The injunction states that the company must stop marketing its services under the brand Spodradio, alleging the inclusion of the word 'pod' infringes Apple's trademark.
Liquid Air Tab said the case is "without merit", adding Apple may be bringing the suit in anticipation of an iTunes own radio service or because the company is threatened by the Spodradio service, which it says negates the need to use an iPod or iTunes to listen to podcasts.
Liquid Air Tab is now preparing to see Apple in court. In the meantime, the spod.com site has been taken down, while Apple has allowed the company to continue using its Spodradio homepage.
Tom Neumann, VP of Liquid Air Tab, said the company is thinking of filing a damages suit against Apple in the US.
He told silicon.com: "Our investors... don't find it at all funny that Apple has taken this action."
Apple declined to comment.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Andy Neale
err...So Apple are claiming to have exclusive use to word 'Pod' are they.
Woe betide any Supermarkets or greengrocers selling 'Peas in the Pod' then......
And George Lucas must be eagerly awaiting his lawsuit for the use of the phrase 'Podracers' in Star Wars Episode One.....
I am sure the list goes on...
2. Phil
News from the ages reports ..Shock ... Horror ... Probe ... Latest news .. allegedly :-)
Gwyneth Paltrow gets sued for calling daughter "Apple" ....
God being investigated for possible copyright breach on giving APPLE being used in ADAM and EVE case ...
Sir Walter Raliegh castigated for discovering Potato and calling it an "earth apple" .. Issac Newton (Newton ??? heard that before) demonised for refering to APPLE on tree during disvery of GRAVITY ..
Apple claims copyright on GRAVITY, POTATOES and the BIBLE ... more soon
3. anonymous
What next...?
Will Apple sue anyone who calls any item anything, as they have a claim to using 'groups of letters to descibe things'? It wouldn't suprise me.
This is getting silly, and can only happen because big companies like Apple can afford the expensive lawyers needed to battle such spurious cases.
It's the same argument as with patents. Big corporations patent obvious things, some of which pre-exist, but no-one can afford the court cases to argue with them.
Seems like the patent office and the trade-mark registration departments are both 'in bed' with big, rich, powerful companies.
4. Cell Phone Junkie
If that's true, then please explain how Interdigital has enforced patents against Nokia & Ericsson....
Or how a little start-up, from San Diego CA that has turned itself into a multi-billion dollar company was able to battle the technology monopolists like Ericsson, Nokia, Seimens, etc who still, in violation of WTO commitments, actively work to block non-European wireless technolgies from the EU...
After the European mega corporations tried to 're-invent' CDMA technology (and hobbled it in the form of UMTS or WCDMA) and then tried to claim that Qualcomm had no patent rights....
It works both ways.... Qualcomm would never have grown from a start-up to the behemouth it is today if what you claim is true.
5. Mark Allen
This is all a touch ripe from a company that has regular (losing) spats with the other Apple. Perhaps they're anticipating losing big-time with the latest.
6. anonymous
To Cellphone Junkie...
From their own site, Interdigital have 306K shares at around 19 dollars 'out there'...
My calculator puts that at $5.8M - hardly a back-street organisation.
Thanks for proving my point, not dis-proving it!