The Wall Street Journal on Apple trademarking the shape of the iPod (emphasis mine):
These nontraditional marks are difficult to obtain. But unlike more commonly used utility and design patents, which exist to cover functions and the ornamental look and feel of products and expire after a set number of years, trademarks can remain in force potentially forever.
…While competitors may eventually appropriate the iPod’s inner workings, as utility patents expire, they will risk litigation if their products come too close to the trademarked shape of the iPod, including its popular circular-touchpad interface.
Moreover, trademark law allows the holder to sue not only manufacturers but also distributors of competing products whose attributes so resemble those of the protected mark that they create the likelihood of confusion in the marketplace.
…The key to obtaining nontraditional trademarks is to convince an examiner in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that the average consumer associates the design attribute in question exclusively with the company seeking the trademark; in Apple’s case, this meant proving that the average shopper for a media player identifies the shape of an iPod with Apple.
That sounds like a pretty big sue-stick.
Intellectual-property laws haven’t interested me much. Partly because the zelots and freetards are such a turn off. But mostly because it turns out that patent law hasn’t actually been a barrier to me writing code (*gasp*). I just don’t see evidence that what we have today is an irredeemably broken system (although there are compelling historical anecdotes worth reading that says differently). Maybe that’s just my ignorance talking, but at least it’s been bliss so far.
It’s a little sad to read that the “design” in “design patents” apparently means “the ornamental look and feel of products” to most business folks.
Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
–Steve Jobs, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Apple Inc. in a 2003 New York Times magazine interview.