In February 2013, the Instituto Nacional Da Propriedade Industrial (the “Brazilian Patent and Trademark Office”), ruled that Gradiente Electronica (“Gradiente”), not Apple, owned the “iPhone” mark in Brazil. The “iPhone” term was registered by Gradiente in 2000, 7 years prior to Apple’s release of its iPhone. The decision came 3 months after Gradiente launched a low-cost Android smartphone using the iPhone brand (see their model here).
Continue Reading Apple is fighting back in Brazilian courts to get its iPhone trademark

By Beni Surpin and Crystina Coats

In his opening remarks to the Senate, when presenting Senate Bill S.3325 to the floor on July 24, 2008, Senator Evan Bayh (D – Ind.) stated: “if hundreds of our cargo ships were being hijacked on the high seas or thousands of our business people were being held up at gunpoint in a foreign land, there would be a great sense of alarm and unshakable government resolve to act. That, in effect, is what is happening today, yet we are not doing nearly enough to stop it.”
 Continue Reading Senate Bill 3325 – The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly