November 29, 2006...7:00 pm
Apple: We Don’t Need No Stinking Podcast!
A while back podcast industry people started spreading the rumor that Apple was going to sue everyone who used “podcast” in their company name. The rumor was refuted fairly quickly (after all, it’s impossible to claim the rights to a popularized term), without much word from Apple themselves. Interestingly enough this podcaster recently went to the trouble to license the podcast name from Apple, and after a fair amount of time Apple said they laid no claim to the podcast name. Maybe Apple thinks podcasting has come and gone, or realized it wasn’t worth the time and energy of their high-priced hawkish lawyers, or maybe Apple is smart enough to realize the PR backlash from the podcasting community, probably a significant cross-section of are/were early adopters of Apple products. Maybe?
2 Comments
November 30, 2006 at 1:39 am
I thought that it was interesting that in the letter they referred to:
“third party use”
What are they the second or something? Clearly they think that they have some claim to the work or parts of.
November 30, 2006 at 2:44 pm
I don’t think Apple planned it that way, but so many of the early podcasters and podcast directories were making the association between the pod in podcast and iPods– Apple probably started to believe the hype they didn’t even create!
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