"iPhone" brand does not belong to Apple in Brazil...

[Spekio]

Source in Portuguese



While I have yet to see this reported by international media, but some company registered "iPhone" here in Brazil back in 2000. So now it released it's own iPhone smartphone, that uses android. Since brazilian law dictates the first company to register a patent is the owner of it, and was done 7 years before Apple released it's iPhone, probably done in good faith.

I wonder how events will unfold.

====EDIT====
Perhaps this would fit news and politics better. Could a mod move this please?

[ryacko]

This is hilarious.

Surprised the iPhone company doesn't sue Apple thanks to copyright treaties. Any idea if Apple sells iPhones in Brazil?

[Spekio]

Oh, it does. It has it's own patent pending in here, even.( I'm a lawyer in Brazil, by the way.) I wonder who will sue who first.

[fordlltwm]

Question, given Apple is one of the richest companies in the world at the moment, could it not liquidate some assets and buy the Brazilian firm, remove iPhone patent, and flog it off cheap? Unlikely but it could happen, I think, anyone care to correct me on this? Assuming the Brazilian firm isn't absolutely huge.

[Havok]

I'm surprised Samsung hasn't tried to buy them.

[Stark]

Since any attempt to do so would immediately inflate the company's value and provide almost no benefit to anyone (aside from the ability to sell shitty Android phones in one country with an 'hilarious' name) it doesn't surprise me at all.

[Havok]

I bet there is some way that they could use owning the 7 year previous registered name of iPhone to their advantage somehow that would make it worth it, IF giant corporations liked sticking it to each other like that.

Or I was kidding chucklehead.

[Stark]

Did you not notice the 80s? :V

[Spoonist]

And iPad wasn't registered by Apple in China, nothing much happened there either, some money changed hand and then its business as usual.

By this time any iXXX product that Apple could think of has been registered and in use by someone somewhere so this is neither new nor out of the ordinary.

[bilateralrope]

I'm surprised Samsung hasn't tried to buy them.

Given that a major claim of Apple in at least one of the lawsuits is that Samsung's phones are too similar to iPhones, even attempting to buy the trademark gives Apple another point in favor of any copying being deliberate