David Emery OnlinePodcast™
25 September 2006
As you may have heard, Apple has been getting some flak over its alleged crackdown on using the word ‘podcast’. First things first, though – Apple is not trying to say they “own” the word “podcast” – it’s not one of their trademarks. What they are trying to do, however, is police the word “pod”, obviously due to their ownership of the iPod trademark.
Why are they doing this?
You would have thought the last thing Apple would want to do is start cease-and-desist-ing companies left right and center – just look at the amount of bad press that have come out of it; although – not for the first time – no where near as much as if it had been Microsoft at fault.
So, why bother?
Because they have to, by law.
It’s very simple really; if they don’t be seen to be defending their trademarks, those marks become invalid. So, as long as Apple wants to be able to stop someone coming out with on “eyePod”, for example, it has to try and defend any occurrence where its mark is at risk.
Taking the “myPodder” example, it’s not too hard to see that someone could potentially confuse this with an official Apple iPod related product; and if there’s any possibility for confusion, they have to pursue it. Similarly, the problem with “PodcastReady” is not so much the “podcast” bit, but the possibility that “PodcastReady” could be confused with something iPod related – for example the “Made for iPod” 3rd party peripheral branding scheme. Don’t forget, it’s not that it is confusing, just that there’s a possibility that someone could get them confused.
Similar problems occur when you’re trademark gets so popular that it becomes “verbized” – people start using your brand name as the generic word for doing something, and hence the trademark becomes invalid. Google is desperately trying to avoid that happening at the moment (they can’t stand it when you say you googled for something…), but they seem to be fighting a loosing battle. Escalator, Hoover and Biro are also past examples of this.
Of course, all this not being Apple’s fault doesn’t mean the whole situation doesn’t stink – it’s a very tricky problem though, and change in the way it works would almost certainly lead to other, possibly bigger, problems. For example, if you didn’t have to actively police your trademarks, then you’d get companies sitting on a whole pile of trademarks, waiting till someone infringes on one and makes it big and then demanding huge amounts of money.
We know that the above would happen, as that’s exactly what does happen with patents.
I guess we have to live with it, then…
UPDATE: Wired have scans of the letter Apple sent to PodcastReady and it further reenforces the above – Apple state within it that they have to act to prevent the dilution of their iPod and Pod trademarks.
Similarly, they don’t want PodcastReady to stop using the word “podcast”, but they simply don’t want them to use it in the categories of “portable listening devices”. They also reiterate that they have no objection to the use of the word “podcast”.