Fujitsu locks horns with Apple in iPad trademark dispute

 

Gallery

Posted on 1 Feb 2010 at 10:33

While Apple's iPad stole all of the headlines last week, the company has been in a dispute with Fujitsu over the name since last September and it doesn't look like the Japanese manufacturer is going to step down.

"It's our understanding that the name is ours," said Mashario Yamane, director of PR at Fujitsu, in an interview with the New York Times.

Fujitsu has been selling its own iPad, a £1,500 Windows CE point-of-sale device used in retail stores, since 2002 so you'd think it is well within its right to claim ownership of the name.

There's more to it than meets the eye though, as Fujitsu didn't apply for the iPad trademark until 2003, specifically covering handheld devices used in retail. However, the application was bogged down and eventually listed as "abandoned" in April 2009 because a company called Mag-Tek had already claimed the trademark rights to IPAD for its line of PIN-entry keypads.

Following the abandonment, Fujitsu asked the Trademark Office to re-open the application because Mag-Tek's IPAD had nothing to do with Fujitsu's iPad. The Trademark Office agreed and re-opened the application.

In September, the USPTO published Fujitsu's trademark application as part of the process which allows other trademark holders to oppose its registration within a set period of time. At that point, Apple said it wasn't happy about Fujitsu's application and filed its own application using a shell company called IP Application Development.

The situation as it stands, then, is that Mag-Tek is selling the IPAD under a valid trademark, Fujitsu is selling its iPad with a pending trademark application and Apple has announced (and plans to sell) its own iPad with no trademark at all.

While Fujitsu's claim is entirely valid, Apple can't just storm in and take Fujitsu's pending trademark because it really wants the name. Instead, it's going to have to argue that iPad is too similar to iPod while filing its own iPad trademark registration. At the same time, it'll have to convince the Trademark Office that it won't confuse people looking for Mag-Tek's PIN-entry machines, never mind Siemens' iPad motor trademark or Coconut Grove's iPad bras.

We'll see how this one plays out, but we wouldn't be surprised if Apple gets what it wants - after all, the same happened with the iPhone when Cisco had launched its own iPhone earlier.

Author: Tim Smalley