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Apple May Lose iPhone Naming Rights In Brazil

This article is more than 10 years old.

Before Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone, Brazilian company IGB Eletrônica had already released theirs.  Of course, everyone knows an iPhone is an Apple product. Even in Brazil, where IGB's brand Gradiente has been selling its G-Gradiente iPhone since 2000. (They should just call it the G-phone.)

Here's the rub: Apple wants to trademark the word iPhone in Brazil so that an iPhone is an Apple, and not a Gradiente.  Though any Brazilian within a mile of a TV set equates the iPhone to Apple, it is unlikely that Apple's 2007 request with the Brazilian Institute for Industrial Property (INPI) to make iPhone an exclusive Apple trademark will pass muster.

On Feb. 5, INPI will publish its decision on the matter in the Industrial Property Magazine, which services as the official bulletin of record for trademark and patent protection.

Gradiente won the rights to trademark iPhone as its own brand back in 2008 after a long 8 year process.  If IGB Eletrônica wanted to play hard ball, it could ask INPI to reinforce Gradiente as the owner of the trademark, essentially voiding Apple's request to be owner of the same name and force the California tech powerhouse to spend millions to purchase the exclusive rights to the name from Gradiente.

Apple acquired exclusive usage of the iPhone brand from Cisco back in 2007. Last year, Apple paid Taiwanese tech firm Proview around $60 million to trademark the word iPad.

IGB nearly lost their exclusive rights to call its Gradiente phone the iPhone this year as it is.

The Brazilian company launched its latest G-Gradiente iPhone just 15 days before its trademark rights expired.