iPad Trademark Rights

This Phoenix Patent Attorney was in Miami for part of the last two weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice the tremendous use of huge billboards.  Advertising is colossal in that town, and so trademarks are everywhere.  On the way out, I noticed one ad that struck a well-known chord.

This poster for the Marquis Residences is certainly stunning, but what I noticed most about it was the “myPad” written along the top.  There have been lots of i-Whatevers since the success of iTunes and iPods, and this one changed the flavor a bit.  Clearly, this is an area of commerce that Apple has not (yet) entered, so the likelihood of confusion is small.  Nevertheless, the connection your mind draws is an almost an instantaneous one, and you could ponder whether the myPad use is diluting the iPad mark a bit.  And for fun, here is a myPad within an iPad, like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Add to that the crisp, clean font used for the “myPad” lettering, and how would calligraphile Steve Jobs feel?

Also downtown was this ad (well, similar to that ad – I didn’t have my camera out) for the Beatles, which, of course, is too cool to even say “The Beatles.”  Perhaps the band couldn’t work out the licensing rights for their name after finally surmounting the long struggle between their record label and the computer company.