United States: Apple Is Sued Over The "iBook"

Apple finds itself in hot water again for slapping the signature "i" on a product and claiming it as its own. This time, it's the "iBook." J.T. Colby and Company Inc., a small family of publishers, filed suit against Apple for its use of the term "iBook" as it relates to electronic books.

Now electronic books are nothing new. By now, many of us have bought one or two to experiment with the concept, be it a Kindle, Nook, or some other e-reader. It is not a large leap for Apple to try and join the party with its application for use on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch devices. That being the case though, Mac fans will recall that Apple also used iBook as early as 1999 for a laptop.

The complaint claims that sometime by 2007 J.T. Colby and Company Inc. purchased the rights to "ibook" and "ipicturebook" among other assets from Byron Preiss, a New York publisher who has published over 1,000 books, and among these, electronic books, under the "iBook" mark. Now J.T. Colby and Company Inc. claims that "Apple's use of the mark 'iBooks' to denote the electronic library that can be accessed via its iPad table computer and its iPhone, is likely to overwhelm the good will of plaintiffs' 'iBooks' and 'iPicturebooks' marks and render them virtually worthless." The complaint further asserts that because of Apple's power and popularity, it is probable that when people see the term "iBook," they will immediately associate it with Apple.

J.T. Colby and Company Inc. seeks an injunction against Apple's use of the "ibook" name as well as an unspecified amount of damages, as outlined in their complaint.

This is another interesting case and I am sure not the last one involving Apple and claims against it for trademark infringement. Apple is a giant target for erstwhile plaintiffs seeking a proverbial pot of gold at the end of a litigation rainbow. Clearly Apple is a very sophisticated company and understand the importance of trademarks and not infringing on the rights of others. This doesn't mean that Apple is necessarily right (or wrong) here – but does reflect how Apple makes business decisions about moving forward with trademark uses even if Apple knows that third parties may object (and the business decision is that Apple may consider its use to be lawful but likely to draw a challenge or objection that Apple will have to address or overcome).

Caveat though, I am a huge Apple fan.

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