Apple faces competition for iWatch trademark in Europe

Apple will face competition in Europe for the "iWatch" trademark it has already filed for in Japan, Taiwan and Mexico, because other companies have already registered the name in relevant trademark categories.

Among them is Probendi, an Italian company that is also incorporated in the U.S. In February 2009, Probendi registered the European trademark for iWatch with OHIM, the European Union agency responsible for registering trade marks and designs that are valid in all 28 countries of the E.U.

OHIM
Probendi owns the word mark for "iWatch" and uses it for a mobile phone application that sends real-time audio, video, and location data to an online emergency and security support system that can be used by emergency services, according to a brochure about the product. Daniele Di Salvo, Probendi's director, could not immediately comment on Friday on Apple's trademark filings.

That Probendi owns the word mark in the E.U. doesn't mean that Apple cannot apply for a European "iWatch" trademark, said Margarita Garcia of OHIM's information center. "We are an administrative institution, we do not refuse applications," she said. "We cannot be a party in these battles."

According to an online description of OHIM's procedures, it is up to registrants to defend their trademarks, and for new applicants to demonstrate that already-registered trademarks are not being used.

The owner of a trademark has the obligation to ensure it is used and has to check if others in the same market are using the trademark, Garcia said. When an application is filed for the same class of product, OHIM will send a letter to the trademark owner notifying that a similar trademark has been filed, after which the owner can file an opposition which will be reviewed by OHIM, she added.

In Probendi's case, the trademark is in class 9, which covers apparatus, instruments and media for recording, reproducing, carrying, storing, processing, manipulating, transmitting, broadcasting, retrieving and reproducing music, sounds, images, text, signals, software, information, data and code. It also covers software, instruments and apparatus for the location and navigation of vehicles and personnel; computer application software for mobile phones.

Whether an opposition succeeds depends on the arguments filed, Garcia said. "It is never easy, it is never black and white," adding that anyone can oppose a trademark application within three months after it is published.

Probendi is not the only company in Europe staking a claim on the iWatch name, though. AIO Distribution, a company from the U.K., also filed for a European registration of the trademark in Dec. 2012. In this case, AIO tried to register "iwatch", with a lower case w, in class 9 and also class 38, which covers mobile phones and communications by mobile phones.

AIO's trademark claim hasn't been registered yet, and its application was opposed by the Vlaamse Media Maatschappij (Flemish Media Company, VMM), according to OHIM's records.

VMM has an online portal, iwatch.be, where content from the Flemish television channel VTM can be watched for a fee. The company has registered the "iWatch" trademark in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, according to the records of the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BOIP), which covers the three countries.

A VMM spokeswoman reached on Friday declined to comment on Apple's trademark filings in other countries and wouldn't discuss the opposition of AIO's filing at the OHIM. The company doesn't discuss its strategies, she said.

AIO Distribution could not be reached for comment.

There is another iWatch trademark holder on record at the BOIP too. A private person from the Netherlands, Otto F. Weise, registered "iWatch", "iWatch Phone" and "iWatch Connect" in different categories according to BOIP records.

The trademark iWatch is registered in a category covering jewelry while iWatch Phone and iWatch Connect are registered in a category that among others covers cash registers, calculating machines and data processing equipment.

The situation is much the same in the U.K., where Probendi owns the trademark (because it has an E.U. trademark), records at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) show. In the U.K., an application for "i_watch" from Turkey in the jewelry category is also pending.

In Germany, a visual iwatch trademark is registered by Matrix Security, records of the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO) showed. And in June, a Vanessa Hansen, applied for the German word mark "iWatch".

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

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Wall Street Beat: Tech sector faces turbulent market

Closing out June, tech stocks are up for the year but have not enjoyed the full fruits of a bull market that has boosted the Dow to its best first half since 1999, right before the dot-com crash.

 

The tech sector also faces what some analysts predict to be a rough few quarters, amid doubts about the economy and market forecasts for a tough year for tech sales.

 

Tech stocks were up Friday, with the Nasdaq Computer Index, which tracks more than 300 tech-related stocks, closing at 1615.46, up 2.21 percent. It was a mixed day of trading, however. Of the five tech bellwethers on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Intel and Hewlett-Packard closed up for the day, while IBM, Microsoft and Cisco were down.

 

Unusually, compared to what's been happening so far this year, tech was up while other sectors were down Friday. The Dow and the Standard and Poor's 500 were both down for the day.

 

The market as a whole has done well this year so far, however, despite recent turbulence caused by remarks from the Federal Reserve Board. Since May, Fed officials have cautioned that as the economy shows signs of recovery, they may wind down initiatives mean to fuel the recovery from recession. These include the Fed's policy of maintaining low interest rates as well as its "quantitative easing" program of buying about $85 billion in bonds per month to boost the stock market.

 

Last week, for the first time, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke laid out a timeline for winding down purchases of mortgage bonds and treasuries, possibly next year. The remarks led to a big stock selloff, with the broad Standard and Poor's 500 index declining 2.5 percent last Thursday, its worst drop up to that point since November 2011. Still, stocks have done well this year, with the Dow up by about 14.5 percent and the S&P up about 13 percent. In comparison, the Nasdaq Computer Index is up only 4.5 percent for the year.

 

It's a far cry from last year, when tech led markets for much of the year. This year, forecasts of relatively slow sales have hurt confidence in tech. The hardware sector is especially under pressure as users spend more time on tablets and smartphones, eschewing pricier desktop and notebook computers.

 

This week, Gartner forecast that worldwide desktop and notebook computer shipments will total 305 million units in 2013, a 10.6 percent decline from 2012. It expects the PC market including ultramobiles to decline by 7.3 percent.

 

The downward trend is offset by tablet shipments, which are expected to increase 67.9 percent, reaching 202 million units, while the mobile phone market will grow 4.3 percent, with shipments of more than 1.8 billion units, Gartner said.

 

So while there is good news amid the gloom, the shift from traditional PCs represents a wrenching shift for the market.

 

"Consumers want anytime-anywhere computing that allows them to consume and create content with ease, but also share and access that content from a different portfolio of products. Mobility is paramount in both mature and emerging markets," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, in the report.

 

There will be winners and losers as the market changes. For example, BlackBerry's attempts to recapture its past glory as a mobile market leader are faltering.

 

On Friday, BlackBerry said it suffered a $84 million loss during the three months to June 1. The company shipped 6.8 million smartphones in the quarter, 2.7 million of which were running the new BlackBerry OS. But many analysts were hoping for a profit and sales of at least 7.5 million phones. CEO Thorsten Heins asked for more time in a conference call to discuss the results, saying that "BlackBerry 10 is still in the early stages of its transition."

 

But the market reacted violently, as BlackBerry shares plunged by 27.76 percent to close at $10.46.

 

Meanwhile, the software market was supposed to be a bright spot for tech this year, but recent results point to a rough quarter for enterprise vendors. Last week, though Red Hat reported a solid quarter, Oracle revenue was soft, and Tibco's sales and profit declined year over year.

 

Though Oracle reported a 10 percent year-over-year increase in profit, to $3.8 billion, revenue for the three months ending in May was flat at $10.9 billion. Tibco said revenue for the period ending June 2 was $245.8 million, down from $247.4 million a year earlier, while net income was $8.7 million, down from $26.5 million.

 

Both companies gave conservative guidance for the next quarter. As earnings season gets under way in earnest in a few weeks, other tech vendors are likely to do the same.

 

"With the up and down gyrations of Japan, Europe still bumping along the bottom and angst (which we believe is premature) over Fed tightening in the U.S., no sane CFO will put out a big September quarter guide," wrote Canaccord Genuity analyst Richard Davis in a research note. "Investors' nerves are still raw from the choppy March quarter. With software modestly underperforming the market so far this year, the likely reaction from investors will be to sell first and wait for an obvious catalyst to step in."

 

 

Chris Brown faces new charges

 The RnB star Chris Brown has been charged with a hit-and-run and driving without a valid licence.

Lawyers for the district attorney's office in Los Angeles say the singer gave false insurance information and refused to hand over his licence after his car hit a Mercedes last month.

Both offences together carry a maximum of one year in jail.

Brown is currently on five years' probation for attacking his ex-girlfriend, the singer Rihanna.

If a judge rules the charges violate his probation, reports suggest he could face up to four years in jail.

Brown assaulted his 25-year-old ex-girlfriend in 2009 and accepted a plea deal of community service, five years' formal probation and domestic violence counselling.

Six months ago, it was claimed he was involved in another fight, this time with singer Frank Ocean, over a car parking space outside a Hollywood recording studio.

Police said Brown was under suspicion for punching the victim but the case was dropped after Ocean decided not to press charges.

 

Hulu Faces a Nebulous Future as It Seeks a New Owner

But the valedictory lap did not last long. Even as the number of views were adding up, so were concerns within the company about the site’s future.

That’s because Hulu, the Web streaming service that is jointly owned by the Walt Disney Company, NBCUniversal, and News Corporation, is up for sale. And each of the potential buyers brings with it a different vision of what Hulu should become.The interested parties include Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, the Chernin Group — an investment firm owned by the former News Corporation president Peter Chernin — and two private equity firms, Guggenheim Digital Media and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.Yahoo, which completed its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr on Thursday, had also expressed interest with an exploratory offer of $600 million to $800 million, according to several people briefed on the sale, who, like several others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because negotiations for the sale were continuing.The eventual value of Hulu (which would include the brand, its accessible interface and the rights to many of the television shows it offers) is expected to be roughly $1 billion. Binding bids are due by Friday, though one person familiar with the process said the deadline could be delayed until next month.Web sites change hands all the time, but Hulu’s sale could signal something more fundamental: the end — at least in its current form — of one of the pioneers of online streaming, which in recent years has become an increasingly popular way to view content.Hulu has a free Web site, with streams of TV episodes supported by ads, and a subscriber-only section, called Hulu Plus,which offers additional episodes at a cost. In 2012, Hulu had $695 million in revenue and the Hulu Plus service had four million paying users, according to the company.Depending on the buyer, Hulu could be used to foster the further growth of online streaming as an alternative to the cable TV bundle. Or the site could be kept under lock and key, exclusively for the use of cable subscribers.Time Warner Cable, for instance, would like to use Hulu to create an industrywide “TV Everywhere” hub in which subscribers could have access to network and cable shows on-demand. A distributor like DirecTV could use Hulu — both its brand name and its technology — to sell a new service that streams a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet. Intel is trying to create a similar type of service; if it succeeds, then traditional distributors may feel the need to sell something similar.For cable or satellite distributors, Hulu is also a prize for an existential reason: as an executive at one distributor put it, “It’ll make us look like we’re ready for the future.”But that option concerns some Hulu employees who are fond of the company’s quirky Silicon Valley-meets-Hollywood culture. They see the site as an innovative service that untethers shows from the television, not as another piece of a costly cable bill.“Can Hulu remain Hulu if a cable company buys it?” asked one person close to the company.Several Hulu executives have already left the company, amid worries about the future, and it is possible there could be an exodus of creative and engineering employees if a cable operator wins the auction and the site loses its start-up identity.Jason Kilar, the founding chief executive of Hulu, left in March and was temporarily replaced by Andy Forssell, the senior vice president for content and now the acting chief executive. Richard Tom, the former chief technology officer at Hulu, left after Mr. Kilar, as did Johannes Larcher, the former senior vice president for international operations. Later this summer, Pete Distad, Hulu’s senior vice president for marketing and distribution, also plans to depart. A spokeswoman for Hulu declined to comment.Mr. Chernin has the most personal connection to Hulu, as he championed the start-up from its inception when he was still at News Corporation. This year, Mr. Chernin reportedly bid about $500 million for the company. The Chernin Group receives financial backing from Providence Equity Partners, which until October owned a 10 percent stake in Hulu. (Providence is not directly involved in the bid.)Now, AT&T is in talks to join the Chernin Group in a bid for Hulu, a pairing that would give Mr. Chernin’s media, technology and entertainment investment group the financial heft to go up against major corporations. (The technology Web site AllThingsD first reported on the partnership. An AT&T spokesman declined to comment.)For AT&T, Hulu could present the opportunity to expand its “U-verse Screen Pack,” a $5-a-month option that lets U-verse TV subscribers stream videos.