It would be hard to miss the media hype surrounding Apple’s release today of its latest version of the Macintosh operating system, OS X “Tiger” (aka 10.4). But online / catalog retailer TigerDirect was apparently surprised, waiting until yesterday to allege trademark infringement.

Shakedown? Or legitimate complaint? In a near-first for Independent Sources, we accidentally did some original reporting. We deduced the email address of TigerDirect’s president, Gilbert Fiorentino, fired off a message, and surprisingly received a reply that did not seem to be cut and pasted:

“Do you think it would be ok for us to start manufacturing a pc and call it, Orange, Pear, then Apple? Why is it OK for Apple to steal the Tiger mark which we have been using for 15 years, then for us to use the Apple Mark?”

A subsequent email from a lackey directed all further communication to their investor relations office.

Fiorentino’s response indicates a lack of understanding of intellectual property law. Site trademarkedge.com provides a nice summary of the test that will be used: would a “reasonably prudent” consumer likely be confused by the use of the same or a similar trademark on potentially competing products?

Unfortunately for TigerDirect, there is just no way the average computer user is going to confuse an online/direct retailer with an operating system. Do they confuse (TigerDirect competitor) MacConnection with Macintosh computers?

Absurd claims are one thing, but TigerDirect’s timing seals the “shakedown” case. Apple filed for its “Tiger” trademark in July 2003 and it was published for comment and objection in 2004. Talk of the Tiger codename was prevalent on the web in the spring of 2004. TigerDirect clearly decided to wait until Apple invested millions in the product launch, and hope for a quick payday.

If they had a strong claim that would be one thing — the infringed party is not obligated to object as soon as they become aware of the infringement. But with this pathetically weak claim filed the day prior to launch, TigerDirect’s hope for a quick score is the only explanation.

What’s most amazing — if Fiorentino believes what he wrote to us — is how badly informed he is. If they manufactured a computer named Apple, as in his example, that’s clearcut infringement. But he has no such case. And the damage to his company is going to be material. First, Mac users will abandon them; people who object to unethical behavior will stop buying from them; and they will be subject to a torrent of online invective (on Slashdot, there was a massive thread of people complaining about problems with Tigerdirect within hours of the posting of the news of the suit). There is no upside whatsoever. If I owned stock in TigerDirect’s parent, Systemax (NYSE:SYX), I’d sell it based on management stupidity.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 29th, 2005 at 10:31 am by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.