Apple Inc. and the Beatles' record label Apple Corps Ltd. have finally buried the hatchet and settled their very, very on-going dispute over 'Apple' related trademarks. After more than a decade of fighting over Apple's use of the name in selling music-related products, as well as music itself with the iTunes Store, the two companies are calling it a day. From the press release:"Under this new agreement, Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to "Apple" and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use."
In other words: it seems as though Apple Inc. has won the trademarks, but we don't really know how or why. In fact, both parties are eating their own legal fees. A quote from Steve Jobs doesn't help much either:
"We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future."
Unfortunately, this hasn't heralded the much rumored debut of the Beatles' catalog in the iTunes Store, despite Mr. Jobs' open invitation - yet.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-05-2007 @ 10:16AM
Joe said...
I can't understand why it is so important to so many people that ITS should sell Beatles albums. Most Beatles fans already own the music on CD, and it's really trivial to import a CD into iTunes.
I'm sure there will still be more sales of Beatles music in the future, so it would be nice if we were able to buy from ITS, but I don't think this is a big concern for current fans, aside from a desire to get more people listening to the Beatles.
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2-05-2007 @ 10:37AM
Scott Stevenson said...
It seems this was settled out of court, so they probably didn't really win them per se. As for whether there's a market for Beatles music, I predict that if and when it shows up on iTunes, at least one of the albums will immediately shoot to number one.
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2-05-2007 @ 12:13PM
Jonathan said...
The market for the Beatles is still huge (in the UK, Beatles albums are still full price, 40 years on), and remember that there will shortly be releases of remastered versions of the original albums (the CDs we have were just cleaned up back in the early days of the technology) so the market gets even bigger when you consider the people buying those versions (I will, for example).
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2-05-2007 @ 12:54PM
Alex S. said...
Did anybody else happen to notice that at the MacWorld Keynote Steve Jobs did a demo and just happened to use a Beatles album? Did I read too much into it? =)
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2-05-2007 @ 1:56PM
Adrian said...
Re: Jonathan
Thanks for the info. I love my beatles collection but I only want it in Apple Lossless format (ripped from CD's too), don't want it compressed down to the standard iTunes 128kbps. Also, the stereo mixing really needs enhancing for listening on headphones. Just hope they keep everything else the same though, no horrible 'remixing' or 'updating' or filling in the beats.
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2-05-2007 @ 3:25PM
Bryan said...
Does this mean that they will change the store name back to the Apple Music Store? That was the original name of the online store when it first opened.
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2-05-2007 @ 5:30PM
David said...
Bryan - they changed the name when they added movies, njot because of these lawsuits
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2-05-2007 @ 5:40PM
Jon said...
Uhh, we know why Apple Corps. gave the trademarks to them -- it is very clear and alluded to in this post. In England, when you lose a lawsuit, you have to pay BOTH sides attorneys' fees. Thus, Apple Corps. agreed to this so that thye would not have to pay Apple Inc.'s fees, which were probably upwards of ten million bucks. And contra the commenter above, Apple did "win" the trademarks but getting Apple Corps. to agree that Apple Inc. owns them -- it doesn't matter that that particular part was "out of court" -- it certainly was a win and it was a direct result of Apple Inc.'s win inn court.
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