Apple sued over use of Rendezvous trademark

Let me be the first to say this is silly.

1) TIBCO uses Rendezvous as an app name for a J2EE messaging infrastructure. This is quite different from a UPnP infrastructure.

2) "Rendez vous" is, of course, a French phrase, and ubiquitous as a term for meeting. See recent rulings regarding "Windows" trademark. Unless there is a direct and malicious intent to confuse consumers, there is no case here. Apple is not using, of course, the defendable trademark "TIBCO Rendezvous".

3) TIBCO took this long to realize Apple was using their trademark?

4) How many people, do you think, saw Rendezvous being touted as a way of seeing devices on your network, and thought "Cool! Apple bought TIBCO!"?

5) Still, Apple should have been a bit smarter in choosing its name ...


IMHO, if this case succeeds Anderson Windows should sue Microsoft for creating a product obviously meant to confuse and deceive which is also used in homes.

Originally posted by jettredmont
3) TIBCO took this long to realize Apple was using their trademark?

Click to expand...

I agree it sounds silly, but if you read the article, they say they've been trying to reach an amicalbe settlement ever since Apple started using the Rendezvous name.

I bet we see Apple move to "Rendezvous Networking" or something.

Apple sued over use of Rendezvous trademark

Hope this hasn't been posted b4, did a quick search, didn't find anything

From wired article:
Business software company Tibco has filed a complaint with the US District Court for Northern California claiming that Apple's Rendezvous technology infringes upon one of its own trademarks, the company said today.

Tibco claims Apple attempted to trade on its goodwill and engage in unfair conduct and - presumably a reference to what it describes as the Mac maker's "continual refusal to honour our trademark". Apple has also allegedly been unwilling to "reach an amicable agreement" over the trademark - cough up money to Tibco, in other words.

Rendezvous is the name Tibco has given to its messaging infrastructure, part of its ActiveEnterprise offering, and says it has the name trademarked since 1994. The company has asked the court to force Apple to pay up for the competitive and economic harm it claims the Mac maker has done it.

Click to expand...

Full Article.

edit: looks like my thread was merged with this one...just sayin'...

Apple didn't damage the name...

Its possible someone get the names mixed up with their products or services, but I haven't even heard it was trademarked until the suit.

Pretty sad.

I haven't heard of the name, either, so when I hear about Apple's use of the name, I just think of that.

why now?

Apple has used the Rendezvous name for a few years. Why are we hearing about this now? Seems fishy.

--Waluigi

I guess Apple must have known about this "trademark" before they officially named their ZeroConf technology "Rendezvous". Also refusing to settle this is a good sign that Apple lawyers know what they are doing.
I guess that this is just another IT company suffering from money problems hunting for some easy money, how big is their product of no one has ever heard from it before now? Hmm, it does mean free advertising.

This is like the OS 9 operating system that some industrial manufacturer used in its plants.

This probably won't get anywhere.

The two Rendezvous products are almost the same, since their similarity begins and ends with having something to do with networks of computers. Funny thing is TIBCO's software is NOT available for Mac at Rendezvous is available only on Macs.

So yeah, I'm sure that this is eating into TIBCO's profits.

It really makes me mad too, because we all know how many companies would end up buying Macs that implement Rendezvous as a means of wireless networking when they really meant to get enterprise messaging software for hundreds of computers.

To tell you the truth, 99% of the people working in corporations could make a mistake this stupid. But IT departments never would.

I might have missed it, but this was also mentioned on Slashdot.

Hey eric_n_dfw did you go to UofA?

Originally posted by themadchemist
So yeah, I'm sure that this is eating into TIBCO's profits.

Click to expand...

It may not be about Apple eating into TIBCO's profits. A few years ago I worked for a small medical software company called Visteon. Somewhere along the line somebody called asking if we'd be interested in selling our domain name, we of course said no and didn't think too much of it. A few months later Ford names it's parts division Visteon (puts up a website at visteon.net instead of visteon.com) and takes out full page adds in every major metropolitan newspaper. Our customers freaked out. Even though Visteon the auto parts company and Visteon the medical software company are obviously unrelated, it cause major confusion in our customer base and our potential customers. The Ford Visteon brand was so much larger than our Visteon brand that it completely diluted our branding and overshadowed everything that we did. I suspect that is the problem that TIBCO is having. Obviously the Apple Rendevous brand is not quite so big as Ford, but the technologies are closer so I'd bet the impact is about the same.

Originally posted by cc bcc
I guess Apple must have known about this "trademark" before they officially named their ZeroConf technology "Rendezvous". Also refusing to settle this is a good sign that Apple lawyers know what they are doing.
I guess that this is just another IT company suffering from money problems hunting for some easy money, how big is their product of no one has ever heard from it before now? Hmm, it does mean free advertising.

Click to expand...

In all fairness, the product seems to be somewhat significant, at least for a small company as this one appears to be.

Just because you haven't heard of it, doesn't mean it's not important! This could be said of Afghanistan before Sept. 11th. Most people in this country were ignorant of that other nation, but it soon became apparent that our fate would become significantly intertwined with its.

This product could be useful and well-known to those corporate underlings who deal with implementing such network systems.

It is always standard procedure to do legal searches for trademarks before using them. I'm certain Apple knew quite well the consequences. They may have offered Tibco some reimbursement in order to use it but could not reach any agreement, obviously. I suspect they would have offered very little.

As far as OS-9 and Mac OS 9, there was a pronounced difference in the names; therefore, the resolution was in Apple's favour.