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The word “iPhone” is known internationally, but Apple can’t use the word in Mexico any longer and even has to pay for having used it at all.
For a company that made a record setting $54.5 billion dollars in the last quarter of 2012 ($13.1 billion of that being pure profit), you would think that Apple could pretty much say and do whatever they want and wherever they’d want to say or do it. Such is obviously not the case though as countries all around the world seem to be showing Apple just how little power they really have.
Yesterday in our article China Isn’t Happy With Apple And Make Their Own iPhone we discussed how the Chinese copied the iPhone design and made their own Android based iPhone, back in 2012, just a month or two before Apple actually released the actual iPhone – and the Chinese government seems to care nothing about initiating patent litigation against companies that have infringed on Apple product designs. Now Mexico steps up to the plate and deliver another blow of disappointment to Apple Inc. This one though through legal means through their own countries court system.
Apple has lost an appeal in Mexico that has officially now denied them the right to use the iPhone trademark.
Ifone was officially registered in 2003 by a Mexican company, in Mexcio. Apple didn’t come up with the “iPhone” name until 2007 at which time they then attempted to register it, in Mexico. Apple has been attempting to get the rights to the “iPhone” name, in Mexico, ever since then, but not only have Mexican courts now settled the trademark matter and given rights to the Mexican company iFone, but iFone now wants Apple to pay them damages for attempting to use the name in the country.
Ifone doesn’t even sell phones, they run call center services, but even still, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the law provides for an award of at least 40 percent of infringing sales.” Of course, over a course of the last 6 years of doing business in Mexico, that can add up to a huge figure that Apple may owe.
To top it all off, according to Forbes, Apple can’t even use the word “iPhone” in Mexico any longer, which should also make for a very interesting future for Apple, in Mexico.
