Apple’s strategy when it comes to much of its i branding has been pretty consistent to date: steal a name, wait for its trademark owner to complain, settle. The Cupertino-based company did it with “iPhone” and again with “iOS,” for example, and now it looks like “iBooks” will play out the same way. New York publisher John T. Colby purchased assets belonging to publisher Byron Preiss several years ago, and included in that buy were more than 1,000 books published under the “ibooks” name. Apple does own a trademark for “IBOOK,” but this trademark covers a PC the company used to sell — the “iBook” — and not books or electronic books. “Apple’s use of the mark ‘iBooks’ to denote the electronic library that can be accessed via its iPad tablet computer and its iPhone is likely to overwhelm the good will of plaintiffs’ ‘ibooks’ and ‘ipicturebooks’ marks and render them virtually worthless,” Colby’s lawsuit states.
Apple sued for infringing ‘iBooks’ trademark
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 7:18PM EST
If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.
Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 10 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
