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USPTO Preliminarily Denies Apple's 'Touch ID' Trademark Application

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied Apple's trademark application for the "Touch ID" name used for its fingerprint recognition technology, citing a similar trademark owned by Kronos Technology. The USPTO rejection letter was sent to Apple in May 2014, according to Patently Apple, which recently uncovered the communication.

touchid.jpg
In its letter to Apple, the USPTO said Apple's trademark for Touch ID was too similar to U.S. Registration number 2735480, which was issued to Kronos in 2003 and protects the term "Kronos Touch ID." Apple has until November 2014 to change the nomenclature of its trademark application, which would require the company to rename its fingerprint scanning technology. Alternatively, Apple can seek to acquire or license the trademark from Kronos.

Apple faced a similar situation with its iPhone name, which was trademarked by Cisco. Apple and Cisco negotiated a deal that allowed Apple to license the trademark following an infringement lawsuit filed by Cisco shortly after the iPhone debuted. In recent years, Apple also settled an iPhone trademark infringement case with Brazilian company IGB and an iPad name dispute Chinese company Proview Technology.

Article Link: USPTO Preliminarily Denies Apple's 'Touch ID' Trademark Application
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/15/touch-id-trademark/
Apple probably can solve their trademark issues (iPad, App Store, MultiTouch, and now Touch ID) by doing a little research first.
 
TouchID is a good name, and likely an important part of their upcoming payments platform. Just pay Kronos and call it a day.
 
Reports on Office Actions from the USPTO always come off as huge things on tech sites. It's not that the USPTO is declaring it dead. For example, a trademark office action has a 6 month due date for a response. Apple has many courses of action to take because the trademark registration application isn't abandoned yet.
 
unplugme71 said:
Or buy them... :)
Click to expand...

Kronos is a global company that deals with workforce software for other companies. I would imagine the price tag would make the Beats acquisition look like chump change in comparison.

Apple will probably offer to buy the name only or buy a license to use.
 
Knowing apple they will either:

1. Acquire the license like they have in the past

2. Rename it something like 'Finger ID' and overdramatize it.

Ex: Finger ID is beautifully, unapologetically renamed for a better user experience. With Finger ID, we had to work with usability, then work backwards to design. Which let us to create the beautiful iPhone 6 to go with it.
 

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macduke said:
TouchID is a good name, and likely an important part of their upcoming payments platform. Just pay Kronos and call it a day.
Click to expand...
Oh how I would love for Apple to buy Kronos. I have to use and edit time entries every day and that software is HORRIBLE (although the time clock works but the UX sucks). You're lucky if it even gets through loading.

Too bad it would make little sense for them to buy them. Licensing is the way to go.
 
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QuarterSwede said:
Oh how I would love for Apple to buy Kronos. I have to use and edit time entries every day and that software is HORRIBLE (although the time clock works but the UX sucks). You're lucky if it even gets through loading.

Too bad it would make little sense for them to buy them. Licensing is the way to go.
Click to expand...



THANK YOU!
I work for a large media and entertainment company and we're switching from Kronos to Workday. The fact that we had an older computer trying to VPN onto the company network and that the Kronos Application utilized an older version of Java meant that it would freeze up most of the time.

Nasty software.
/rant
 
madsci954 said:
Kronos is a global company that deals with workforce software for other companies. I would imagine the price tag would make the Beats acquisition look like chump change in comparison.

Apple will probably offer to buy the name only or buy a license to use.
Click to expand...

Well, the price tag for that company in 2007 was $1.77 billion, and it's probably far less now...so no, Beats acquisition would make this look like chump change.
 
madsci954 said:
Kronos is a global company that deals with workforce software for other companies. I would imagine the price tag would make the Beats acquisition look like chump change in comparison.

Apple will probably offer to buy the name only or buy a license to use.
Click to expand...
...aaaand to use "Touch ID," what other answer did you have in mind?
 
Random thought, I never liked iPad. I remember many threads around early 2010 hinting to iSlate as Apple bought up domains with that name. Would have saved them the headache.

As for this, seems frivolous. It's not "Kronos Touch ID", it's "Touch ID", a pretty simple monicker. Either Apple pays off the patent/settles or changes it to "Apple Touch ID"?
 
Iconoclysm said:
Well, the price tag for that company in 2007 was $1.77 billion, and it's probably far less now...so no, Beats acquisition would make this look like chump change.
Click to expand...
Their current valuation is actually at 1.78B according to the NYSE. Doesn't change your overall point, but it hasn't decreased.
 
madsci954 said:
Kronos is a global company that deals with workforce software for other companies. I would imagine the price tag would make the Beats acquisition look like chump change in comparison.

Apple will probably offer to buy the name only or buy a license to use.
Click to expand...

Funny enough, Apple has used Kronos for its own workforce management for years.
 
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