Huawei mocks Apple: it had registered the Vision Pro trademark four years ago
[ad_1]
There was a time when Apple and Huawei battled for dominance of the phone market. Huawei has sometimes been accused of being inspired a little too much by Cupertino products: in design, in features, in some gimmicks such as the force touch launched at the Ifa in Berlin a week before the iPhone 6s. Eight years later, with the Chinese company almost disappeared from the western smartphone market, the object of the dispute is however a name: Vision Pro. Huawei allegedly registered the trademark on May 16, 2019 and therefore Apple could not use it to market the your headset in mixed reality.
Exclusive preview
We used and wore Vision Pro, Apple’s headset for virtual and augmented reality
by our correspondent Bruno Ruffilli
The patent
The Vision Pro will debut in the US next year, likely to be available later in some international markets. And there could begin the problems for Apple: the patent 38242888 of the Chinese intellectual property office, in fact, assigns Huawei the exclusive use of the brand for devices belonging to the 9 range, a vast range of products, ranging from devices photography, film and signaling and includes wearable virtual reality devices, LCD TVs, radio equipment and many more.
The Shenzhen company has exclusive rights to the Vision Pro brand for 10 years, until November 27, 2031. Huawei currently has two product lines with this brand: the Vision Glass smart viewer and the Vision Smart Screen televisions. The “Vision Pro” name is not currently used but may have been trademarked in anticipation of future models in the Vision Smart Screen series.
Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone on January 9, 2007. On January 10, Cisco sued Apple in US Federal Court for trademark ownership: just three weeks had thrown first a line of VOIP phones with the same name. The brand was actually registered in 1996 by Linksys, then bought by the powerful American networking company. Apple could not give up a name that was the natural continuation of a strategy begun years before with iMac and iPod and continued with iPad and iCloud: so, after a month, the two companies found an amicable agreement, and when the iPhone arrived on market, in June of the same year, the matter was resolved. Apple will then also negotiate with Cisco the sale of another brand, iOS, the name of the iPhone operating system.
In the same days Cupertino’s most famous legal dispute over a trademark was also closed, the one with Apple Corporation, the Beatles’ record label. Jobs had pledged not to use the name for music-related initiatives and products, but the boom in iTunes and music file downloads forced him to renegotiate the deal. And this time he had to pay: a figure never revealed, but it seems close to 500 million dollars.
Virtual reality
Apple Vision Pro, Zuckerberg’s opinion: “Nothing we haven’t done before”
by Bruno Ruffilli
What happens now
Before the launch, many had bet on another name for the Apple viewer: Reality Pro. Which remains registered to the Cupertino company and could be used in China to sell the viewer without problems. But it could also end up on the massive list of unexploited patents, and be replaced by an all-new brand.
Or Tim Cook could enter talks with Huawei to use the Vision Pro brand in China. Apple could thus keep the name it has chosen for its mixed reality headset and not infringe any copyright: it would in all likelihood be a long process, but time does not seem to be an issue, given that, at best, the Vision Pro could be on sale in China only from 2025.
Third possibility, Apple may decide not to sell the Vision Pro in the People’s Republic. But, judging by the number of Chinese developers, journalists and influencers present at the latest WWDC, this seems the least likely solution: it is too vast and too promising a market to be able to do without.
[ad_2]
Source link
