Apple’s Mighty Mouse put under lawsuit
The might of Apple’s Mighty Mouse may be tested in court. Man & Machine, a Landover, Md., maker of computer peripherals, on Tuesday filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against Apple and CBS. “This action arises from Apple’s use and proposed continued use of the trademark ‘Mighty Mouse’ in violation of M&M’s rights in its own ‘Mighty Mouse’ trademark,” the complaint states. “Apple’s use of the ‘Mighty Mouse’ trademark takes place under color of an agreement with CBS purporting to license such use.” The “M&M” in the filing of course refers to Man & Machine, and not the trademarked candy distributed by Mars.
Such confusion is what Man & Machine seeks to avoid. The company says that it has been selling its Mighty Mouse, “a waterproof optical mouse for medical, industrial, and marine applications,” since March 2004. Apple began selling its Mighty Mouse for computers in August 2005. The problem with having two products named Mighty Mouse becomes clear when one googles the term (apologies in advance to Google’s legal term, which has objected to the use of the search company’s trademarked name as a verb): Apple’s peripheral and the cartoon character for which it is named dominate the search results list. M&M’s product is nowhere to be found in the first 10 pages of search results.
Source: InfoWeek, Zdnet
Comments(33)
Maybe they just need to learn some SEO.
it should work now:
http://www.newtorrents.info/torrent/42811/Rambo.720p.BluRay.x264-REFiNED.html
do you not get the joke?
it’s from the cartoon…
it’s funny, don’t delete it you prick phuck moderator
Why do we care about apple’s mouses and lawsuits…lol
This may backfire for M&M, since CBS actually holds the trademark for Mighty Mouse. CBS can turn around and sue M&M for using the name. This is the reason, if you read carefully, Apple got permission to use the name Mighty Mouse and M&M never did.
BTW, I do SEO for a living, all I can say is to M&M is they shouldn’t have picked a name/term that has such a high popularity for being searched, for something that is not even computer part to begin with… like duh, the cartoon character is always gonna have the top results, its been around for 40+ years.
Example I am gonna make a protein supplement called He-Man… like you ever expect to beat the He-Man character in a google search, I doubt it will ever happen… And I would be surprised if Filmation didn’t sue me.
the mighty mouse is Sh!t.
ive got one and its hell to get a right click out of. 0 buttons on it except for one click when you press the whole thing down.
its about as much use as a bar of soap.
BTW martin?
You know you have made it on the net when you have as many psyco rolls on your case as you have genuine fans!!
Keep RLSLOG going through all the sh!t and eventually the dufus count will drop
@6 s.t.e.v.e.o
You are clearly a PC user who is taking the p i s s and a complete noob. It actually has two buttons that are invisible to the user as they are covered by the top part.
Look I’m going to say this once…PC users stop wasting your time pretending you own Apple products on here just to say that they are crap and sort our that WinRAR Trojan
im a mac user and ive had the thing open. its sh!t. its extremely unresponsive for day to day use… i try it out every now and again but im plugging my 5 button microsoft mouse back in after about an hour. as you can see from the dodgy camera phone pic below:
http://hotimg21.fotki.com/a/86_145/171_10/DSC00194.jpg
it is nice to look at but useless if your working with it every waking hour.
why bother posting worthless comments that no one cares about… how about some INDIANA JONES stuff about the new movie (which i saw today and enjoyed alot) so thanks for that yea
Interesting that my post was deleted. It contained nothing vulgar or offensive, it was simply a critique of this website.
If I do not like something about this website then why am I not allowed to say? Everything needs criticism from its users or else how would it better itself?
I believe the issue of ‘tech news’ is something that splits the RLSLOG community and I think it would be interesting to see a poll about it. To see what percentages like and dislike ‘tech news’ being posted on this website.
I think my main issue here is that the ‘tech news’ posts don’t even have any witty criticism of the articles or any of the posters own comments. It is just a copy a paste job that I believe serves no purpose.
I also wonder what the editors views on ‘tech news’ posts are? I believe I saw a comment from Mr.X a while ago saying that ‘tech news’ posts were getting out of hand in terms of quantity.
If we look at the the amount of posts, ‘tech news’ ranks 3rd coming in below ‘movies’ and only a smidge below ‘TV shows’. Surely with the sites main focus being release news, the category of ‘tech news’ should be much lower down on the list. A tool only used when there is a desperate shortage of newsworthy scene releases.
Anyway, thats my 2p.
Jay, I commented on this numerous times. Tech News are here from the very beginning and I receive message and emails pretty often that people actually like this stuff.
Your comment about quantity has no objective value as we post max 2 tech news a day from the beginning. Mentioning a shortage of new scene releases, this is probably happening right now, and we still stick to regular 2 tech news a day.
I believe it keeps many people informed about what’s happening in the world and I do not plan to change much about it. If you hate it that much, there’s nothing easier than scrolling over such a post.
Hey Martin, where did you put the luxury watch post? I wanted to get me one of those =) haha
Intellimouse Explorer 2.0′ wireless baby!
The original company should be fine, look at Apple computing vs. Apple records, they were fine (at the time) since Apple computing said they would NEVER go into the music business.
It is the same here with CBS, they do not make any hardware, let alone computing hardware so no “reasonable” person would assume they are from the same company (even more so since the Mighty mouse character is not on the mouse – unlike the apple logo on apple computing)
I do however see them either being bought out buy apple or being lawyered out of business, since Apple would rather spend millions rather than change the name of a product.
Of course a google search would have turned this up but hey why bother think8ing ahead…
So, this is a lawsuit fueled by lack of Google’s results.
Funny.
Love this Tech News more than some torrents being posted.
A lot of news on this site I actually READ.
Keep up the good work and keep’em coming.
Martin is right…I like tech news..and I like the way rlslog post tech news…I hardly read news now days coz I’m busy in my work and downloading stuffs from the scene. I am very thankful that even when we were busy, rlslog can bring us some news about what the world is happening right now. Because of rlslog, I learned how to download good movies, games, music and other stuff and also I learned about recent news about technology like the Nokia nanotechnology, the google robot competition and many more…Thank you rlslog and more power…
@9s.t.e.v.e.o
Fair comment, each to their own then. I make websites so I’m at my computer most of the day and I personally find the right click ok.
Apologies
M&M’s Mighty Mouse is a trademark for the cartoon and the character. This is a piece of hardware called Mighty Mouse which has nothing to do with the cartoon.
Maybe I should patent my own name, and there are over 1 billion people using the same name.
Stupid Americans, always pushing minory thing to the court of law.
I got one mighty mouse and it sucks for games that require the use of the 2 mouse buttons cause its not precise
This article was very poorly written. I had to re-read the introduction to actually understand what was going on. M&M? Mighty Mouse? Apple? Landover? Some background info would be nice, next time!
@ 11 & 12
I actually enjoy reading these tech posts. Contrary to #11 I would like to see MORE of these articles posted. That being said I know that Staffers do lives and need to continue to live them so that may not be possible. As #12 stated use your five button mouse or Mighty Mouse
and use the really easy to use Scroll wheel to scroll past those articles you don’t wish to browse.
@ This Article
I have not looked up the changes to the law surrounding names and copyright as of late but last I read if a product or service is released the same name can be used so long as it is not in the same industry or if the name affects the business of the original holder of that name. With that being said so long as this company has proof that they were selling and distributing this product under the name Mighty Mouse I think they have a pretty solid case.
As this is obviously an American Case I would appreciate an American legal opinion on this.
L1feless
I have mac and all their hardware is always top qulaity aka won’t break in a month. Anyways the whole law-suite is bull-shiet if you ask me.pc.
-Unbreakable /Bmore
I think our life becomes more & more complicated with wide deluge of copyrighted trademarks…
Like getting rid of Apple’s mouse is going to get rid of the first ten pages of google’s search pages for “Mighty Mouse”. First off, one would think you would get more about the Mighty Mouse cartoon character when typing that in, than either of the named mouses. Secondly, even if Apple stops distribution of the Mighty Mouse, there will still be pages up that say, “Apple changes the name of its Mighty Mouse” or “Apple discontinues the Mighty Mouse” or something similar. Which will be at the top of the search results as well. I mean, anyone who really wants to buy M&M’s mouse could type in a couple different things. Such as, “M&M’s Mighty Mouse”, or “Man & Machine Mighty Mouse”. Seems like it’d be a pretty easy find. Who knows though…
On an off topic note…DAVID COOK WON!!! YAY!!!
only a mac fanboi living in his grannys basement would have the intellect to call the mouse mighty mouse and think it would be ok…lol!
only a mac fanb0i living in his grannys basement would have the intellect to call the mouse mighty mouse and think it would be ok…lol!
only a mac fanb0i living in his gr@nnys basement would have the intellect to call the mouse, mighty mouse and think it would be ok…lol!
oh error posting, not my fault for it appearing 3 times
F%CK Macs… logitech wireless S510 best goin round
Stupid lawsuit, but I am always happy to see Apple getting sued…
here I come to save the day!