Chalk up a win for MyPhone
International electronics giant Apple has lost its trademark battle against local player MyPhone as the Intellectual Property Office has sided with the local brand in the trademark spat.
Apple claimed that local player MyPhone was copycat riding on its iPhone models when the Solid Broadband backed local company first launched back in 2007. According to the Intellectual Propert Office, MyPhone is marketed as a distincly local, Pinoy phone. Additionally, the Solid Broadband group first applied to register the MyPhone brand back in June 25, 2007, a few days before Apple released their first iPhone models in the US.
“The buying public should be credited with a modicum of intelligence and discernment in purchasing…mobile phones where brand patronage or consciousness is prevalent,” the trademark office said, noting that not only was my/phone marketed as a “local Pinoy phone,” its product markings and marketing materials generated “distinct commercial impressions” than those of the global marketing campaigns and product literature of the California-based company.
Unlike the multi-million legal fight between Korean giant Samsung, Apple’s legal tussle with MyPhone and Solid Broadband has been kept quiet in the past few years, but a win is a win, obviously, no matter how quiet it is.
With the decision, MyPhone has achieved something that even Samsung has trouble with – a clear, legal victory over the biggest technology brand in the world.
