A company called iCloud Communications has filed a lawsuit against Apple…for obvious reasons.
The company, which most people would probably never have heard of until this legal episode, finds great offense from Apple calling its latest service ‘iCloud.’
“The goods and services with which Apple intends to use the ‘iCloud’ mark are identical to or closely related to the goods and services that have been offered by iCloud Communications under the iCloud Marks since its formation in 2005,” iCloud Communications says in its complaint.
Apple has faced copyright and trademark infringement cases in the past. The company used to think that no one else could have possibly come up with the super clever idea of putting a lower-case letter “i” in front of a generic word, like iPhone (Fujitsu registered the “iPhone” name years before Apple decided to do so).
This time, however, Apple made sure to have its affairs in order, having bought out the rights to the iCloud domain name from a Swedish software company.
It apparently didn’t do anything to prevent a firestorm from iCloud Communications, however. It’s not an open-and-shut case, though, because the unknown company never filed for a trademark in the US.
Neverthelss, the Arizona-based communications group thinks its company has been damaged by Apple, and needs compensation.
The complaint continues, “Due to the worldwide media coverage given to and generated by Apple’s announcement of its ‘iCloud’ services and the ensuing saturation advertising campaign pursued by Apple,the media and the general public have quickly come to associate the mark ‘iCloud’ with Apple, rather than iCloud Communications.”
