Do Apple Trademarks Reveal What It's About To Launch?

from the foiled-by-trademarks dept

Tue, Sep 6th 2016 4:27pm — Mike Masnick

If you're a gadget watcher or an Apple fanatic, then you already know that tomorrow is Apple's big fall event when it announces new hardware products. Unlike basically every other tech blog in the world, we tend not to cover the announcements (or all of the rumors leading up to those announcements). Every so often something interesting will come out of them and we'll write up that, but for the most part, we recognize that other sites are going to cover the basic beats and we're not the kind of publication that wants to spend our time writing up promotional copy for tech companies. But, sometimes there's some overlap in our usual coverage and these kinds of events. Brian Conroy, a trademark lawyer in Ireland who has a fun blog of trademark-related issues realized that Apple may have leaked some details via its trademark applications.

For example, while there are rumors of three new iPhones, Conroy notes that Apple has only applied for two trademarks related to the iPhone 7: "iPhone 7" and "iPhone 7 Plus." That doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a third option, but the trademark applications seem to suggest only two. Conroy has also dug deep into global trademark filings to basically prove that Apple is the company behind the trademark filing for "Airpods" which many expect to be the name of the new earbuds or something similar that Apple may announce. The trademark itself was noticed a long time ago, filed for a company named "Entertainment in Flight LLC," presumed to be a dummy corporation set up by Apple. But Conroy goes further and shows that Apple may have slipped up in hiding some of this, and that the same Airpods trademark filing in countries like Norway, Malaysia and India came directly from Apple -- and the one in Malaysia points back to the original Entertainment in Flight filing in the US -- more or less proving that Entertainment in Flight is really Apple. Here's Conroy's video explaining this:

Trademark law: finally useful for something.

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Filed Under: airpods, brian conroy, iphone, trademark
Companies: apple

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Mason Wheeler (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 5:22pm

Me. Big news for all the iDiots in the audience, I guess...
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Whatever (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 5:40pm

Apple applies for many trademarks and patents, sometimes with a point and sometimes just to be defensive. They file enough that one could bootstrap almost any possible scenario and be "right".

Hey, maybe the guy can write for Techdirt! ;)
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- techflaws (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 10:22pm
  
  Re:
  Said the pot that called the kettle black. You can't make this up.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Sep 2016 @ 5:52pm

Apple...
meh.
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Ryunosuke (profile), 6 Sep 2016 @ 9:46pm

Apple iPods... Apple Airpods... they added AR to iPods?
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2016 @ 12:28am
  
  Re:
  Did they licence google AR or have they created their own?
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  - Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2016 @ 5:56am
    
    Re: Re:
    What does Accounts Receivable have to do with any of this?
    
    Maybe Apple is releasing their own Accounts Software so we can all pay no tax. Is that it? Do I get a prize?
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Sep 2016 @ 7:42pm

Who cares what the products are? We finally got around to standardising on the 3.5mm audio jack and getting rid of all the proprietary connectors. Now Apple is bringing them back.

I sincerly hope no other manufacturers follow suit. In an ideal world, there'd be an outcry and Apple would have to change it back.

But it's not an ideal world. Fanbois will buy anything and other manufacturers will leap onto this new precendent. Thanks Apple, for making things worse again.
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