steve_jobs

Have a look at a small business still feeling the Apple love pre iPhone. The company was sent an email from the Apple lawyers telling them to stop or change the name of a product they have had on the market for years. The company iPod Rip, then wrote to Steve Jobs himself pleading for help on the matter.

Dear Mr. Jobs,

My name is John Devor and I’m the co-owner of a small Mac shareware company named The Little App Factory and a long-term Apple customer and shareholder. I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

We have been distributing iPodRip since 2003 with the aim of providing a method to recover music, movies and photos from iPods and iPhones in the event of a serious hardware failure on their Mac which leads to data loss. Our goal has been to provide the highest quality product coupled with the highest quality service in a bid to resolve some of the angst that is generated by such an ordeal; service befitting of an Apple product. In this department we think we have succeeded as we have approximately 6 million customers, many Apple employees, music artists and other notable people in society. In fact I’d argue that our customer service is the best of all competing applications in our niche as many of them are scams and frauds that leave Apple customers with a terrible taste in their collective mouths. We fear very much that tens of thousands of Apple customers looking to recover their own music and having heard of our product via word-of-mouth or otherwise, will instead find a product produced by one of our competitors, and will wind up the victim of a scam (one closely-named competitor charges a hidden monthly fee, for instance).

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons, and in fact I believe that we have been providing an excellent secondary service to Apple customers that has potentially caused you many repeat clients. In fact, we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,

John Devor

Then, imagine them when they saw “Reply From: Steve Jobs” In their inbox. Oh my God, Steve actually replied! Then they clicked on the email and read this:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

Obviously they had no chance here, but Steve of all people knows what a name change to a popular product could cause. Can anyone say “Cisco?” Remember the lawsuit that Apple walked away from when Cisco sued them for the iPhone name?

Whatever the case, iPodRip is now iRip, same great company, same great product, just a new name. Apple has for a long time always been known by its faithful as a company willing to work with its loyal developers and fanbase. And then, the iPhone came along and overnight they turned into Microsoft. Hard nosed, clamped down ready to fling a legal eagle at the drop of a hat. This new approach has been eating away at the longtime loyal, all the while Google is emerging with “OpenSource” mobile OS and now desktop OS. The computing market will be a very interesting place in the 3-5 years.

Personally, I know a trademark is a Trademark, but Steve really could have been a little more personable since he decided to respond to the company. IMHO.

Read