Apple is truly one of the most innovative companies in the world. It has brought technology to the world, and honestly I couldn’t imagine the world if Steve Jobs wasn’t born. If you have a creative company naturally it follows that it’s going to have rivals that are going to copy and take your ideas from you. Apple has gotten used to this happening, in fact they have filed different lawsuits to different companies to stop this. Steve Jobs has also released a number of spicy comments, but to no avail, if you’re making billions of dollars, others would really follow suit no matter what.
You might expect after a while, Apple will grow tired of it, but it doesn’t mean that even if Apple is already used to it, it would follow that they’re not going to fight for the ownership of their creations anymore right? And that is what they’re doing up until today. But aside from filing lawsuits every once in a while, Apple also files claims for the stuff that they have created. They have learned through time and experience that nothing is more effective than claiming your own idea from the start so that others would not think about claiming it as their own anymore.
We’re not talking about gadgets only. We’re also talking about different things, even terms. Just recently, Apple has filed a patent to claim the term “multi-touch”. They claim that the term is theirs and that they can put a trademark on it, however they lost the case.
The US Patent and Trademark Office denied Apple the term multi-touch, stating that there should be a huge and obvious difference with the term being used as “mere descriptiveness”, or it has truly gained its “acquired distinctiveness”. Let’s take a closer look at the term multi-touch and its relationship with Apple shall we?
Why Did Apple Lose Multi-touch?
Of course, the term multi-touch is used on Apple gadgets, however, this term is used as a mere description only to tell how functional it is. the term by itself could both be for, and not for Apple. To make it more simple, the term multi-touch isn’t really used for Apple alone. It is also used for other devices, so the term is not distinct and unique for Apple – which of course lead to Apple losing the case altogether.
Come to think about it, the US Patent and Trademark Office’s right. Apple cannot solely claim the term multi-touch as it is embedded to our modern vocabulary already which means that we;re already going to use it for everything that we can relate it to – not just Apple gadgets.
In any case, this is not the only case that Apple has. The company is actually battling with different companies at the moment. Though Apple lost this one, we can be sure that it’s not going to allow to lose its other battles. This is just for securing a term, but the company’s other battles already meant the stealing of their ideas and inventions, which are obviously more serious.