After the Beatles, Apple faces another music lawsuit that has the connotations of the story of David against Goliath.
A trumpeter has sued the Cupertino giant and, for the moment, the US Court of Appeals has agreed with him.
The object of the dispute is part of the Apple Music trademark, which the American company uses for the streaming song service and which the musician does not want to be extended to live performances, as he considers himself its legitimate owner having filed the Apple Jazz trademark, sooner than Apple did with its Music.
The facts of this controversy date back to 2015, the year in which Apple launched the Music platform on the market to identify different categories of services, including streaming.
It was then that Charlie Bertini, this is the name of the musician, a jazz trumpeter also organizer of live events called Apple Jazz, started the legal battle against Cupertino: in 2021 the court of the US Trademark Office agreed with the Californian company as , he claimed, the trademark was to be related to Apple Corps, registered by the Beatles in 1968 then merged into Apple and therefore before that of Bertini filed in 1985. A few days ago, however, the sentence was overturned by the US Court of Appeals, as Reuters reports online: essentially Apple cannot extend the Apple Corps trademark rights to live performances,
a very different category from the audio recordings for which the trademark itself was originally filed.
The musician argued that the Apple Music trademark applied to live performances would only create confusion with his Apple Jazz.
"Perhaps this decision will also help other small companies protect their trademark rights," Bertini's lawyer said.