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Lord Sugar’s budget TV service, YouView, has lost a High Court appeal concerning its trademark. In a screw-up worthy of a hapless contestant on The Apprentice, it’s looking increasingly likely that YouView’s gonna have to change it’s name. Looks like Lord Sugar’s gonna be on the other side of the boardroom for once.
The appeal is against an earlier decision by the Intellectual Property Office, which ruled that YouView’s name infringed on that of the Your View service offered by telecoms company Total. The IPO reckons that the names are too close, and the similarity “could cause confusion”. YouView argued that the name wasn’t too similar, but the High Court told them (in so many words) to jog on – the decision stands.
So, legally, YouView can’t use its name as its trademark anymore. Doesn’t look like pesky things like the law’s going to stop Lord Sugar though – a YouView rep said on the matter “YouView has no intention of changing its name, this matter is complex and subject to a number of on-going legal actions”.
Brave words indeed, but Total aren’t impressed; their managing director replied by saying they would take the matter further, and seek an injunction and damages as well. Ask me, I don’t think this one’s looking good for YouView – not even Lord Sugar can fire a High Court Justice. [TechRadar]
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I hope ‘Lord’ Sugar get’s dragged through the proverbial. I can’t stand the bitter, twisted, out of touch has been, he’s got an ego the size of my nut sack, which is pretty damn big.
YouView? UView? MyView? TrueView? PooView?
You might want to go see a doctor about your nutsack, it’s not supposed to be that large and inflated unless you plan to use it as a space hopper.
ohhh that sounds rather a painful thing to do, brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgq-P_grmUw
ohhhh the horror
totally agree with you there just wanna punch him in the face
+1, he annoys me soo much!
trueview is CAD software so i cant see that either.
surely they googled the name first? ‘not too similar’??? only an ‘r’ missing
is he telling me in the 80s i could have made ‘Amstad’ computers and he wouldnt sue? yeah, right…
i bet they end up buying the name to save face.
I think his argument is that they’re in different sectors – one being a consumer tv service the other a business-to-business system and are as such unlikely to be confused or that YouView would take any business away from YourView
cheers mate, that wasnt apparent in the article.
they can always try an apple and sue the older product, like they tried with the ipad
Or even Apple just ignoring Cisco’s existing trademark on the iPhone
I’ve always wondered how they got away with that one Cisco has been using ios as a name for their OS for years
This is what im thinking.
“Oh damn it ive signed up everyone in the business to a TV service”
How the hell would anybody confuse the businesses. Virgin would have had a nightmare or Hotmail that could get you in hot water with a spelling mistake.
Exactly. I can’t see how this ever got granted in the first place.
Mr Sugar, you’re FIRED!
ps. I prefer how Vince McMahon from WWE says it though.
Sugar will blame Nick Hewer, Karren Brady as well as his apprentices and fire them.
Sugar will make sure he comes up smelling of roses…….
How he got to the Lordy state he’s in now is incredible when you consider some of the utter crap that Amstrad churned out over the years.
He’s also an ugly spiteful cock of epic proportions IMHO.
Em@iler…..ROFLMAO….WTF??
Bollocks. I will have to change all the report names.