Apple would have loved to extend the influence of the “Apple Music” brand to concerts, but here it is: Charles Bertini has been organizing the “Apple Jazz” festival since 1984. After losing the first instance, the New York musician won an appeal, a decision that has now been upheld by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. Apple has just de facto lost the Apple Music brand due to a technical error.
Image iGeneration.
To understand the details of this case one has to go back, really back. The Beatles founded Apple in January 1968 and registered the trademark in August of the same year. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded their company without infringing on the intellectual property of the four hipsters. Trademarks can be registered in 45 classes, 35 for goods and 10 for services, for example class 38 for telecommunications.
As long as Apple company (Inc of Cupertino) does not step on Apple company’s toes (Corps of London), the two could co-exist with no risk of confusion. Things obviously changed with the advent of iTunes and the commercialization of the iPod. After years of wrangling, Apple (Inc) finally bought the Apple trademark in 2011, with Apple (Corporate) licensing its logo and Class 9, including “sound recording devices” and “media ‘digital recording'”.
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After expanding its branding across most of the available classes, Apple wanted to add the “Apple Music” brand when it launched the service in 2015. Charlie Bertini is certainly the owner of the Apple Jazz trademark, but only in upstate New York and only since 1985, while the Cupertino company owns a federal trademark and can rely on the primacy of the Beatles patent. The musician’s application for opposition was rejected by the trademark commission.
A mistake, according to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, which recalls the importance of classes. Because the Beatles trademark only included the music recordings, Apple cannot claim that it also includes the concerts, “no one can reasonably conclude that the music recordings are essentially identical to the concerts”. The judges had firmly rejected “the litany” of claims based on the primacy of the Apple Corps-filed trademark.
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Lawyers for the Cupertino law firm hoped to return to court after the concerts were removed from their file, a move all the more honorable given that the last edition of the AppleJazz Festival took place in 2014. Unfortunately, the judges denied her request for ten short lines. IPWatchdog believes that this decision invalidates the entire “Apple Music” trademark registration process in the United States. It’s (probably) just a shift.