Dead Apples

There's been a lot of hullabaloo about Apple's filing for iPhone in the trademark world.

That got me thinking about Apple's dead marks -- let's take a look at what could have been...



iSchool was filed for on September 21, 2001 for International Classes 9, 38, 41 & 42. This mark became abandoned in August 2002 for failure to respond to the USPTO. The mark, specifically IC 41, sounded particulary interesting to me:

"Educational services; educational services, namely, providing a web-based student information system, featuring student grades, attendance records, and homework assignments, that enables school districts, schools, administrators, teachers and parents to record, access, report, and manage their student information and performance data, and allows students and parents to access such information and data, in real time" sounds like a fantastic feature for all schools.

Offlinert became abandoned on July 30, 2004 for failure to respond to the USPTO's refusal for registration on the Principal Register due to the mark being merely descriptive.

Lastly, Cinema Tools became abandoned in March of 2006 again for failure to respond to the USPTO. One of the reasons for refusal was that good ole descriptive tag.

A quick check of the PTO shows 531 dead marks owned by Apple Computer Inc. Some of the more interesting names I came across:

Junkyard for "computer software for sharing, managing, viewing and editing files, documents, and electronic mail messages"
FlowerPower for "computers, computer hardware, computer peripherals, and user manuals sold as a unit therewith"
Internet Safari for "providing temporary use of on-line non-downloadable children's educational computer software"
Espresso for "computer software, namely, programming language software and manuals sold therewith"

Take a look for yourself by following these steps:

Go here and choose New User Form Search

Enter Apple Computer into the Search Term box and change the Field to Owner Name

Click Submit Query and voila!

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