Apple Corps Vs Apple
Ten years ago, on the 4th February of 1989 Apple Corps, the Beatles-founded holding company and owner of their record label Apple Records, sued Apple Computer for the second time, seeking unspecified damages, charging that Apple violated the terms of a 1981 trademark coexistence agreement.
This was the result of a 1978 lawsuit against Apple Computer which was settled three years after with US$80,000 being paid to Apple Corps: Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business while Apple Corps was not to enter the computer business.
But in 1986 Apple added MIDI and audio-recording capabilities to its computers and the suit mentioned these capabilities present in the Mac Plus, Mac SE and MacII, the Apple IIGS and in an upgrade kit for the Apple IIe. Also mentioned as infringing were the AppleCD SC drive and Apple’s MIDI device. Although Apple maintained that it had not violated their agreement, it again decided to settle, in October 1991, paying US$26.5 millions and keeping an eye on possibile future violations since it was prohibited from using its trademark on “creative works whose principal content is music”.
On September 12, 2003, Apple Corps/Records sued again Apple Computer. This time the lawsuit was over the use of the name Apple in conjunction with the iTunes Music Store. This third legal tussle was settled in 2006 when the court ruled in favor of Apple Computer holding that “no breach of the trademark agreement [had] been demonstrated”.
Apple Corps did not accept the decision and announced that it would be filing an appeal and putting the case again to the Court of Appeal.
The matter was put definitely to rest on February 5, 2007 when the two Apples announced a mutual settlement of their trademark. Some of the terms were kept confidential but the main point was that that Apple Inc. (now sans “Compuetr” since January) was to own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and would license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.
The image of the Apple logo is from Wikipedia.
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