Apple granted a trademark for the word 280

Think about to register trademark in Asia like Trademark in Malaysia http://www.tigerintellectual.com , Trademark in Singapore

That's it. I've filed for trademark ownership of "a" and "the" before anyone catches on that the USPTO is being run by chimpanzees.

I walked 280 meters this morning. Whoa, I just infringed a trademark, don't sue me Apple!

Everyone should know by now that you can't trademark a number (even in this era of a hopelessly derelict USPTO).

That's why Intel named the 586 "Pentium"; a judge ruled they couldn't trademark x86 numbers.

Much like Acer and their failure to understand that the computer after the Aspire 1 should have been the Aspire 2, Intel never progressed to the Hexium or beyond.

I thought it was slightly cool that the icon was the map of Apple's campus. I don't see that trademarking it is cool though, because why would someone other than Apple want to trademark a map of Apple's campus?
And really, the icon is a derivative work, since it's generated from the Google maps view of the place, so if anything, Google should have the IP on it.

I get that they aren't copyrighting the numbers "280" per se, but that symbol is the standard "interstate" symbol, i.e. SHOULD be public property not something a private corporation can trademark for ANY reason.

I imagine public funds were used to design the interstate symbol, so why should Apple be able to copyright work that our tax dollars paid to create in the first place? Maybe we should sue for royalty payments...

C'mon TUAW, don't go the Gizmodo route. This post is just plain bad journalism.

TUAW - why did you lower yourself to link bait reporting? As others said, they DID NOT trademark the word 280 (by the way, it is a NUMBER not a WORD!). They trademarked the ICON image for their product. This is done all the time by all sorts of companies! A LONG time ago, PHILLIPS 66 did the same thing - look at their logo.

Must have been a slow blog day...

To those who are going on and on about Apple being evil or this being stupid:

What they've trademarked isn't the actual number, what they've trademarked is the use of that number and that shield shape in the logo for an app. That actually makes sense, since that's the only really distinguishing feature of this icon.

The whole point of trademark law is to keep confusion about goods and services to a minimum. Whithout the trademark, I could make some crappy map app and put a 280 highway shield on it and probably make a decent amount on people who didn't look closely enough when buying it.

Another note is that it's PATENT law that's hopelessly broken in this country, with COPYRIGHT law a close second and TRADEMARK law a far distant third. They're three different things, and of them trademark law is easily the most sensible and logically applied.

See guys, this is where thinking about something for a few extra seconds so that you might actually understand it rather than simply spouting off would come in handy. Though to be fair, Kelly wrote the article and headline in a deliberately sensational way, barely bothering to come close to the truth. It makes for better copy that way, integrity be damned!

She and TUAW should be ashamed of themselves.

@evanskis - they're not moving, they're expanding. They'll keep their current building. (And the new one won't be done for 4 years anyway.)