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Ever file for a trademark?
It's neither cheap (for a small company) or easy.
Been through the process twice myself. No thanks.

I will agree to a limited extent that an annual search of the USPTO filings would be in order, but again, you need to also take into consideration the scope of such searches and the basic understanding of how they work.

My wife's company does global searches in TESS and then vets any potential infringing filing.
Some companies simply lack the resources or even the knowledge on how to do this.

I suppose "cheap" and "easy" are indeed relative terms. Yes, I have filed for trademarks, and it was, in my opinion, cheap and easy ("easy" because most of the work was done by a law firm, "cheap" because most of said work is boilerplate documentation and prior registration searches which don't exactly need the "big guns" of any law firm to accomplish).

To put some hard numbers in place, lawyer fees tend to be in the $1000-2000 range for a good lawyer (you might get by with a bit cheaper if you've been through the process and know what to expect and are willing to do more of the legwork yourself), and the trademark itself is around $300/class. It would be rare to spend $5,000 on trademarking your company name.

Certainly compared with the cost of a single lawsuit as plaintiff trying to prove that you really should own the trademark, when you can not hope to get any damages out of the defendant because you didn't register your trademark trademark applications are cheap and easy.

Compared with the cost of procuring office space and server farm space, and bringing on your first employee, trademarking your company name is freaking dirt cheap. And easy :)

This is just business 101. It's what you have to do in the US (and I'm assuming the rest of the world as well), unless your company name is a direct derivative of your own name, and especially if your company/product name is somewhat "generic".
 
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Once again appple is right everyone is wrong no apple is wrong why should i change my name so u a bigger company can use it apple tells you to jump u say how high right off a cliff
 
The only thing they want is money from apple that's all...
It's been habit now to get the name previously and have lawsuit against the big companies if they had got the services of their name ...
 
I think Apple knew what they were doing. How could they not have found these guys when they did their trademark work?

I think it's simple. iCloud Communications is the trademark for a company with a VOIP service. iCloud is a product for sharing and storing. I think they will deem them different enough.

Also... I would bet iCloud Communications also knew what they were doing. With a name like that, how could you not figure someday Apple would be knocking on your iDoor. :D
 
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Still discussing this 6 years on!

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/60671/
 
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This thread must have posts from some of the most vile and vulgar people on the internet.

I own or work with every hardware product Apple produce, but I really cannot fathom how people can take Apples side on this one - this is a huge multinational company stomping all over some guys livelihood.

What is wrong with you people?
 
Don't know what at Apple they were thinking, but surely they should've known that such a name already exists! Now what?
 
Building data centers in Europe and Asia to mirror the North Carolina site?

Why would people even consider a service with the *huge* single point of failure of only having one data center?

Wasn't there a story about them renting 3rd party racks, somewhere? I'm guessing (hoping) they learned some lessons from Mobile Me.
 
I think it's simple. iCloud Communications is the trademark for a company with a VOIP service. iCloud is a product for sharing and storing. I think they will deem them different enough.

Except iCloud Communications doesn't seem to have a trademark. Which means anyone could apply for a trademark, and then it would be this companies job to try to stop them. They didn't do that. And 18 months later the trademark, unopposed so far, was sold to Apple. To late to complain then, I think.


I own or work with every hardware product Apple produce, but I really cannot fathom how people can take Apples side on this one - this is a huge multinational company stomping all over some guys livelihood.

Some guy who didn't do his homework. Some guy who couldn't be bothered protecting his name (anyway, you don't even have to get a trademark, just applying would have given them some protection because then their name would have been on the record). And they let someone get a trademark and use it for eighteen months, and they only realised what was going on when Apple bought the trademark from its rightful owner. The other little guy who _did_ his homework was rewarded with 4.5 million dollars.
 
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It's about time for Apple to finally abandon the i..younameit naming of all their products. They can use something else maybe an idea would be to simply use their apple icon instead of the stupid i and so, no more suits. And the apple icon is an now extremely recognizable logo.
cloud or
icloud? which one is better?

Why on earth does it have to have the word "cloud" in it period, 'i' or no 'i'? Why not mist or rain or limbo? Hell, go with cotton candy (good with candy Apples and what not for goodness sake, but cloud? Ugh.

Cloud reminds me of toilet paper every time and personally I don't think Apple should want people to think of a bear with toilet paper sticking to its butt (because the bear doesn't know to use a wet wipe) when they think of Apple. Sticky toffee pudding stuck on a bear's bottom with toilet paper dangling off. Welcome to the Charmin Cloud! :eek:
 
Just another legal troll.

Seeing how these guys are a real company with a real product and have been around for a while, I don't see how you can seriously say something like this with a straight face, unless you have no idea what it means and are just repeating things you read on the Internet.
 
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This isn't going anywhere. The company was incorporated on 5/12/2011 in AZ. I wish MR had bothered looking that fact up with the AZ Secretary of State and included it in the article.
 
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This isn't going anywhere. The company was incorporated on 5/12/2011 in AZ. I wish MR had bothered looking that fact up with the AZ Secretary of State and included it in the article.

The domain was registered in 2005 (geticloud.com) though :

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: GETICLOUD.COM
Created on: 03-Mar-05
Expires on: 03-Mar-13
Last Updated on: 17-May-10
 
iPoop

For now, Apple owns the letter i. (Specifically the lower case version). If "someone" owned a toilet paper company and had a product called iPoop, they should think about changing the name. Apple could begin talks with Toto about a fully interactive bidet that has free wifi, and even the capability to order and pay for lunch whilst one is on the throne! (NOT an actual rumor... but if it happens, ya heard it here first!) It is really about consumers getting confused with the overlap of an identifier. If there is enough confusion, people simply won't take more than a microsecond to make a judgement call about an identifier label before they file it away. Thats the most basic of all marketing. If something sounds familiar, the average consumer will take nearly 1.5 microseconds to see if it is what they know already, and perhaps in that split of a microsecond, they will actually examine the product to see if they want or need it. We consumers are doomed once this actually begins working for 50% of companies and their products. Until then we are moving towards Apples' iCloud, knocking on the sky...

BTW, the legal troll company doesn't deserve a dime or a nanosecond of attention. They don't have to go away, because in the mind of the majority of consumers, they never existed.
 
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