You may have heard about the legal battle between Apple Corp, the Beatles record company, and Apple Computers. Apple Corp was claiming that the 1991 agreement between the companies for Apple Computers not to engage in "creative works with music as the principle content" via their iTunes online store.
Unsurprisingly this claim has been dismissed. Apple Computers successfully (and quite rightly in my opinion) argued that the iTunes was primarily a content-delivery system, and so not covered by the agreement.
This definitely makes sense - iTunes is branded as part of Apple Computers. But the music is not - nor is their any confusion on the part of customers about this. Their customers do not think that Apple Computers is producing the music. iTunes is popular partly because of Apple's iPod - it is not popular because Apple Corp owns the Beatles music.
Fortunately common sense prevailed here.
Unsurprisingly this claim has been dismissed. Apple Computers successfully (and quite rightly in my opinion) argued that the iTunes was primarily a content-delivery system, and so not covered by the agreement.
This definitely makes sense - iTunes is branded as part of Apple Computers. But the music is not - nor is their any confusion on the part of customers about this. Their customers do not think that Apple Computers is producing the music. iTunes is popular partly because of Apple's iPod - it is not popular because Apple Corp owns the Beatles music.
Fortunately common sense prevailed here.
Trackbacks
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.cloudsofheaven.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/35.