March 24th, 2009
Who owns the word "pod?"
The answer, obviously, is no one. No one can in fact “own” a particular word, bu you wouldn’t know that by the way Apple threatens and litigates products that use the word “pod” in their name.
According to Wired the latest example is a company called Sector Labs whose Video Pod trademark has been blocked by Apple. However, unlike previous victims of Apple’s abusive legal team like MyPodder, TightPod, PodShow and Podium, Sector Lab isn’t taking Apple’s legal threat lying down. The company yesterday filed a 239-page response to Apple’s trademark opposition.
It appears that Apple is not only trying to put an iPod in everybody’s hands and white earbuds in everyone’s ears but to control the use of our language and most particularly the word ‘Pod,’ … If we are not careful, in Apple’s quest for dominance, they will soon attempt to take over the words ‘Phone’ and ‘Tunes’ — let us hope they do not attempt a coup over the exclusive rights to the letter ‘i’.
According to Wired Apple must file a response to Sector Labs by April 1, and then Sector Labs will have the opportunity to respond.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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