The application for the protection of the name for the popular iPad mini tablet was rejected. Agency's explanation is that the device name is descriptive only and does not create a "single point".
However, the battle for Apple is still not lost since the company has time to give another application till July to convince the Patent Agency that its new product is basically different from its "older brother".
In the past few months, Apple was involved in several disputes relating to patents and the names of the competing firms, so this is a problem with the protection of names for iPad Mini only connected to the already existing ones.
Last year, Apple won a dispute with its biggest rival, Samsung, but last month a court in the United States decided that the original penalty of a billion dollars that the Korean company should pay, is reduced by 40% and a date is set for a new trial in order to assess the degree of the damage Apple suffered.
This was the largest compensation she received one of the companies, in some of their legal disputes.
Decision to refuse the patent office to protect the iPad name was brought back in January, but details were available about the public until now. The terms "mini ", fall and the prefix are all descriptive, not even a name that is derived from them - Mini iPad cannot create a unique sense, it writes in the decision of the Agency for the Protection of patents and trademarks. In the last quarter, according to Apple's data, 22.9 million iPad and iPad mini tablets were sold.
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