"It began more than 30 years ago in 1978 when Apple Corps filed
a lawsuit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement.
The legal action was settled in 1981 for a sum that was estimated
to be up to $250million but turned out to be just $80,000.
A condition of the agreement was that Apple Computer would not
enter the music business and Apple Corps would not involve itself
in the computer business. However, in 1986 Apple Corps sued
Apple Computer for violating the agreement after it added audiorecording
capabilities to its computers. A settlement was reached
in 1991 of around $26.5million.
In September 2003, following the launch of Apple iTunes, Apple
Corps sued Apple Computer again for breach of contract.
The case was heard in the High Court in London in 2006 before a
single judge who ruled in favour of the computer company.
On 5 February 2007, Apple Inc. and Apple Corps announced a
settlement of their trademark dispute under which Apple Inc. will
own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and will license certain
of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued
use. It was reported that Apple Inc paid Apple Corps $500million
to do so.” - Roberts, L. (2010)
Analysis
In this case basically Apple Inc owned by Beatles sued Apple
Corp for the same trademark title. Issue was resolved by court by
differenting music owned by Beatles and computers owned by Apple.
However later on when Apple created iTunes they breached
the contract and case was more serious. Apple Corp decided that
Apple Inc will own all the trademarks and they will license Apple
Corp. This is how The Beatles then were able to launched on iTunes.
No comments:
Post a Comment