trademark

Amazon.com's launch of the Kindle Fire is drawing heat from Apple.

Apple, which had previously sued Amazon over its use of the term "App Store," expanded on Wednesday the scope of its lawsuit to include claims of false advertising related to the launch this week of the Internet retailer's tablet. The amended complaint (see below) alleges that since the Android tablet was unveiled in September, Amazon has begun altering its "Amazon Appstore for Android" moniker to de-emphasize the "for Android" suffix in ads for the device.

"Amazon's use is … Read more

commentary The introduction late last week by members of the House Judiciary Committee of the "Stop Online Piracy Act," or SOPA, may test a long-standing reluctance by technology companies to take up arms in the legislative battleground.

The bill, introduced as the House version of the Senate's Protect IP Act, solves few of the glaring problems of the Senate bill and introduces many all its own. While Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) may have given in to hyperbole in calling SOPA "the end of the Internet as we know it," there is certainly a great deal … Read more

Polycom dives into videoconferencing on tablets, Asus unveils a new line of Ultrabooks, Twitter to get "tweet" trademark, and Facebook launches an iPad app -- finally.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Twitter's long quest to secure the trademark to "tweet" appears to be at an end.

Twittad will transfer the trademark to Twitter in exchange for the microblogging site dropping a lawsuit that challenged the Des Moines-based company's right to the trademark, the company's CEO told The Wall Street Journal. Twitter will also restore the Twitter account for Twittad, which helps Twitter users get paid to tweet ads on the microblogging service.

"We've arrived at a resolution with Twittad that recognizes consistent use of Tweet while supporting the continued success of Twitter ecosystem partners … Read more

Facebook's Timeline, the newest and most dramatic change yet to its famous profile pages, hasn't even rolled out publicly yet, but it's already under legal attack.

Timelines.com, a small Chicago based company, filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit yesterday against Facebook. Timelines.com, an online social-scrapbooking company, has been in business since 2008 and is claiming that Facebook's newest platform product could destroy its livelihood.

According to the complaint, which TechCrunch has embedded, the Chicago startup is seeking damages and an immediate injunction to prevent being "rolled over and quite possibly eliminated by the unlawful action … Read more

Apple's effort to trademark the term "Multi-Touch" in the United States has been denied.

MacRumors posts the decision of the United States Patent and Trademark Office dated from last week, wherein the governing body denied Apple's application, saying that the term is merely descriptive of how people interact with its products.

"Thus, from the foregoing, we find that 'multi-touch' not only identifies the technology, but also describes how a user of the goods operates the device," the filing from the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board reads. "Based on the evidence discussed … Read more

In addition to being extremely touchy-feely, Apple can sometimes be just touchy.

So when my almost-regular reading of Go Cheng Doo brought up an example of Apple reportedly being a little upset, I wasn't entirely surprised.

In this case, the company is apparently objecting to the logo of the Sichuan Fangguo Food Co., Ltd. Naturally, it will be down to aesthetes and lawyers to decide just what resemblance this logo has with that of the world's most famous company.

But to some gazes, it might be LG, rather than Apple, which might ask a few questions. It really … Read more

Advertisers and the Internet's overseers seem unable to reconcile a profound disagreement about the future of Internet addresses.

Three prominent groups representing advertisers--the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A)--have come down hard on a program to dramatically expand the number of Internet addresses beyond .com and .net to a new class that could include everything from .berlin and .movie to .plumber and .pepsi. The International Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees Net addresses globally, approved in June the program to expand these so-called generic top-level domains (GTLDs) starting in 2012.

The three groups urged ICANN to reconsider the domain-name expansion program. The strongest terms came from the ANA, which outlined its concerns in an August 4 letter to ICANN that threatens broader and "far more expensive" action than just strongly worded correspondence.

"Should ICANN refuse to reconsider and adopt a program that takes into account the ANA's concerns expressed in this letter, ICANN and the program present the ANA and its members no choice but to do whatever is necessary to prevent implementation of the program and raise the issues in appropriate forums that can consider the wisdom, propriety, and legality of the program," ANA said in its letter. … Read more

The Senate's controversial Protect IP Act, which would significantly expand both public and private enforcement of online copyright and trademark infringement, is returning to center stage.

That was the message yesterday from U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who led a town hall meeting yesterday in Palo Alto, Calif. Goodlatte, a leader in Congress on technology policy, told a crowd of over a hundred that the House is working on its own version of the Senate bill.

Protect IP passed unanimously out of committee in May and now awaits a full floor vote. Goodlatte acknowledged that the Senate version … Read more