PushingJelly

… Just to get up Apple legal’s nose!

Once again Apple’s legal beagles make it hard to defend ourfavouritee fruit company with their feverish persecution of users of the word pod.

London’s Finacial Times has this article regarding the latest alleged infringment

Someone really needs to let them know that the word pod was around a long time before Apple and they don’t have a legal claim to it. If the word in question was “iPod” then maybe, but pod has a number of meanings –

Wikipedia lists these meanings of the word:

A method of propulsion for ships, also known as Azimuth thruster

The seed-case of a flowering plant, particularly of the pea family Leguminosae, and most often of the edible pea

A social group of cetaceans
Pod, Germany, a district in northern Germany, near the town of Wismar
Pod, Bosnia-Hercegovina, a location in the upper Vrbas River valley in Bosnia-Hercegovina where settlements of a Bronze Age people identified by some archaeologists with the “Proto-Illyrians” have been found

Pod (album), a rock album by The Breeders

The Pod, a 1991 album by Ween

A Welsh poet, real name Arwel Roberts

Cannabis, as referenced in William S. Burroughs’ novel, Naked Lunch

A tripod

A slang term used to describe a building used to house Inmates

Synonym , A term used in the vernacular to mean: body, capsule, case, container, frame, framework, hull, husk, mold, shell, skeleton, structure, vessel, and the like

A short video, usually non-professionally produced, also known as Viewer Created Content on the TV network Current TV

An Apple iPod

A packet of fine coffee grounds packaged for use in espresso machines

A footwear brand

An aerodynamic container to be mounted under an aeroplane, containing, e.g., electronic equipment or rockets

“Pod” a futuristic racing game

A paintball container used to reload during games.

Pod: a slang term for an entity living as a human, but unable and/or unwilling to conform to societal and cultural norms and mores. There are a disproportionate number of IT professionals and math teachers who live as pods. The term was first used on the Seinfeld television show when Jerry Seinfeld told Cosmo Kramer that he (Kramer) was a pod.

Note that only one is copyright Apple Computer.

What’s next, are they going to go after Manfrotto for calling their products tripods and monopods or George Lucas for calling the racing vehicles “Pod Racers” in Star Wars?

If Apple wanted “to protect the iPod’s good image” they are going about it completely the wrong way. This suit against Mach5Products has caused Apple so much bad press, they just look like foolish bullies.

They aught to drop the case, apologise to the Mach5Products and try to forget the whole event as a bad idea.

As an Apple advocate, I want them to continue making great products and quashing Chinese knock offs not persicuting small manufacturers that are not infringing any copyrights and don’t have the financial and legal backing to defend themselves against a $7B corporate budget.

The only winners here are the lawyers.

Ahh, that feels better.