Apple in the Cloud

The IPKat's friend Kingsley Egbuonu has been looking to the skies for inspiration, it seems, and after a brief spell of Cloud-gazing he has offered this little thought:

"Apple has filed a Community trade mark application for the word mark “iCloud” in various Classes. This follows its reported acquisition of the domain name iCloud.com from Xcerion back in April of this year [Kat note: Xcerion also holds an international registration for a graphic representation of ICLOUD, designating the EU, which goes back to 2008: see here]. As digital music is becoming increasingly dominant and are overtaking CD sales, Apple is expected to take advantage of its clout in the digital music sector by offering seamless online music services.

The mark “iCloud” appears capable of distinguishing Apple’s goods or services from those of its rivals such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google, thus stands a chance for registration. However, it’ll be exciting see how the race to colonise the word 'cloud' develops in the near future, especially, in respect of trade mark enforcement on the internet with the keenly awaited European Court of Justice ruling in Interflora v M&S in mind.

In respect of copyright, the ramifications of cloud services will be significant, as Apple appears likely to be the first to convince publishers in the music industry to agree on licensing terms for their copyright works. Considering the Hargreaves report in the UK, the e-G8 summit and Russia’s subsequent remarks concerning copyright laws, is cloud computing good news for the music industry -- and are current laws adequate in that regard?"

The IPKat thinks he knows the answer here: current law isn't adequate, either from the point of view of the copyright owner or from that of the user -- but he hasn't seen anything that is a workable improvement on it.  Merpel's in a cynical mood this evening: she's not convinced that cloud computing will make any difference in either direction, since it's just a label for something which, it seems to her, quite a lot of internet users and service providers have been doing for a while now -- but she's prepared to be persuaded that there is a whole new set of bright, bristling issues ripe for litigation, licensing and possibly a few other things that begin with 'l'.

ICloud here
IClaudius here
ICould have danced all night here