Will Apple hunt down German WePad tablet over the "Pad" trademark?

geek.com

7 points·dujkan··8 comments

I bet they'll sue...

On one hand, the name seems pretty obviously derived from iPad. On the other hand, I'm writing this on a Thinkpad; people other than Apple have been using "pad" in computer names for quite some time now.

As I understand trademark law, the fact that something is an obvious derivation isn't relevant (that would be a copyright issue). Note: IANAL

The purpose of trademark law is not to protect the seller, but to protect the buyer by preventing confusion. If there's potential that a reasonable buyer might see a "WePad" and think they're buying an Apple iPad product, then this would constitute a trademark violation. But if we don't think that a reasonable person would be misled, then there is no trademark violation.

EDIT: spelling

That was the original intention but (and IANAL) I read something recently that said it had been extended so that if something damaged your brand, then you got to say whether it was acceptable or not.

I've never heard this, so I'd be interested to see a citation.

Even if true, I don't see how this could constitute damage to Apple's brand. The fact that Apple's name is used to help understand what a competing product is doesn't do any damage to the brand. It seems equivalent to putting on the box "compare our product to an iPad".

I hope not. Trademarking common words such as 'pad' is ridiculous. It's not like they invented some awesome word, like 'cromulent' and don't want others using it. Before we know it, they'll be going after MaxiPad, too.

Your use of cromulent has embiggened us all.

I would think it would be more about the fact that it's an obvious derivation (i->we)

Apple should rather add what is currently missing from the iPad instead of making fools out of themselves.

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