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Peripherals - Thursday, January 5, 2006

Steve Jobs (Caveman Lawyer) Goes After Germany's Spodcast

Our multilingual European correspondent Valerie Thompson has translated some German legal documents whereby Apple Computer has filed a trademark infringement claim in a Hamburg-based civil court. As a result the court decided to forbid Stuttgart-based Liquid Air Lab, the company behind Spodradio, to use the name Spod until the case comes to court. The firm is not using Spod at the moment but had filed a trademark claim along with "spodradio" last fall, according to Liquid Air Lab's founder Mikko Linnamaeki.

The German firm is being allowed to continue to use the name Spodradio until the case is heard in court. Founder Mikko Linnamaeki says he will defend his firm's right to the name and will go to court if he has to.

What has Apple upset are the letters "pod" that appear in firm's service name, it seems. Linnamaeki says he is scratching his head as to why Apple is even bothering to target Spodradio - his firm is not in the hardware business, nor does it run a site like iTunes that charges for music downloads from a catalog. It has a
catalog but it is free to access.

Linnamaeki has a couple of theories as to why Apple on his tail. Spodradio enables subscription to broadcasts of MP3 files (podcasts) on smartphones without the need to connect to a PC. Apple does not offer this ability and iTunes users have to connect to a PC or Mac to download or receive subscriptions.

Spodradio enables smartphone owners to store and listen to a catalog of MP3 files, which means such phone owners would not need to buy an iPod. Another possibility is that Apple will be launching a broadcast radio service perhaps named ipodradio ... but even there it would be a stretch to understand how Apple sees Spodradio as a threat, he said.

In November, CNET reported that Apple came after an open source software group to protect the iPod brand.

Read - Spodradio = Digital Radio + Podshow + Swabian Dialect
Read - Apple threat prompted name change, coders say (CNET)