Apple close to solving Brazilian iPhone trademark dispute

PanARMENIAN.Net - Apple is closer to solving its trademark dispute with Brazilian telecommunications service firm IGB Eletronica, according to Forbes.

IGB owns the brand Gradiente, which in March 2000 asked the Brazilian Industrial Property Institute (known as INPI in Brazil) for exclusive rights to the name iPhone.

At the time, Apple had not yet come out with its iPhone device, and only the iPod and iTunes were known entities in Brazil. It took INPI seven years before they granted IGB the right to trademark the name and that year the G-Gradiente iPhone was launched.

But now Apple wants the name all to itself. The Cupertino, California company tried to do so in 2007, right around the time INPI had given exclusivity rights to the name to Gradiente’s smartphone.

According to Brazil’s largest daily, Folha de São Paulo, both companies have agreed to end the lawsuit over iPhone and come to some sort of “pacific agreement,” the paper reported on Saturday.

Apple has paid millions for its exclusive use of the word iPhone in the past and will likely pay IGB as well. The Gradiente iPhone runs on Android and not on the Mac operating system for smartphones.