Apple May Lose “iPhone” Brand Name In Brazil
Apple’s ownership of the iPhone name in Brazil is reportedly under threat, with a local patent and trademark office planning to give exclusive rights to a Brazilian company. Apple is currently in risk of losing its rights for iPhone’s name in Brazil as long as the local patent and trademark is going to discuss and decide about the next week.
The Reuters and Folha S.Paulo were writing today without mentioning from which side, that the Brazilian Institute of Intellectual Property is planning to decide on a trademark iPhone name for the electronics Brazil company Gradiente.
Gradiente company asked for the iPhone’s naming in Brazil even years before it appeared the Apple’s device. It all had began last year in December when the Brazil company began selling a line of touchscreen smartphones on Google’s Android. Since then, the company didn’t put out its iPhone name.
Talking about their new plans, the Brazil company had declared that the name’s rights will be legally secured in the 2018. However, no one from Apple wanted to declare anything about the reports.
Apple pulled the rights of the iPhone’s name from Cisco Systems in the U.S. in 2007, only a few months before the product came out. Not long after the iPhone had been showed at the annual Mancworld Apple was accused by Cisco for trademark infringement, immediately after the event in January. Cisco accused Apple for approaching the company’s name for a couple of times, and apparently Apple even tried to use the company’s shell for its own benefit. Finally the both parts finished each others debts exactly in February 2007 .
It seems that internationally, the story was showed even more interest and it also included a fight in China for the trademark rights for the name “iPad” and this time with a company called Proview. Everything was solved in July and this time Apple had to pay $60 million to resolve the situation given. There is expected the same type of thing in Brazil if the documents certificate that the Gradiente company is actually right, making a reference from earlier today which said that the company is willing to talk about the deal.
