Apple Computers, Inc. (NASDAQ: ) has begun sending nastry-grams to companies and services that use the word "pod" in their products and services.
Apple has laid legal claim to the word “Pod,” arguing that other companies that use the word as part of their product names risk infringing the trademark of its popular iPod music player.
I feel for companies like Apple and Google. There is such a thing as too much success and I imagine that it's a bittersweet victory when a company has to protect its names from becoming common use.
I can't cite the cases now, but Xerox and Band-Aid (or whoever owned the brand at the time) have fought the same battles. When marketing programs are so successful that a brand name becomes generic and used to reference all like products, that's when the lawyers have to come in or the courts might well take away their trademark on the name.
