Exclusive: Apple seeks rights to iPhone trademark
Apple Computer has filed for a trademark on the term iPhone, suggesting the company plans to use the moniker, recently popularized amongst the analyst and blogging communities, as the official name for its highly-anticipated iPod cell phone.
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple has been building a pipeline of prospective service and product names: its January filing for “Mobile Me” preceded the iPhone application. The new filing brings the expected iPod-and-phone effort into that same brand-control process.
Apple has also used legal threats against rival uses of “pod” and “podcast,” making the iPhone application more than a naming hint: it places a potentially central product label inside Apple’s established trademark strategy.
First-order effects
- Apple begins the formal process of claiming “iPhone” for its anticipated iPod cell phone, giving its product and marketing teams a single prospective name to organize around.
Second-order effects
- Potential users of the iPhone name face greater clearance risk if Apple’s application proceeds, consistent with Apple’s prior willingness to police terms associated with its iPod franchise.
Third-order effects
- If Apple continues pairing early filings with enforcement, product naming becomes a controlled part of launch preparation rather than a marketing decision made at release.
The trend: Apple is treating trademark filings as an early layer of product strategy, securing names before the products attached to them are publicly defined.