Apple Sued by iCloud Communications for Trademark Infringement

Apple has been sued by the computer company iCloud Communications for trademark infringement over the iCloud name. The Arizona-based company had been active in "computer and electronic data transmission" for VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) before Apple's launch of the iCloud and iTunes in the Cloud service earlier this week, following rumors of what would be offered.

The suit was suit filed in a US District Court in Arizona, and claims that since Apple launched their iCloud offering, the public now looks at the iCloud name and sees it an an Apple product, rather than one of iCloud Communications. The Next Web broke the news story and posted the complaint. It's calling for an injunction against Apple's use of the iCloud name.

"... due to the worldwide media coverage given to and generated by Apple’s announcement of its “iCloud” services and the ensuing saturation advertising campaign pursued by Apple, the media and the general public have quickly come to associate the mark “iCloud” with Apple, rather than iCloud Communications," reads the court filing.

Apple did apply for a trademark under the iCloud name in Europe on March 31. Apple bought the iCloud.com domain for a cool $4.5 million from the Swedish company Xcerion, who was using it for Linkoping, a cloud-based data storage service.

iCloud stores everything from your Apple devices (music photos, apps, calendars, documents) and makes them available to all of them with an effortless sync. Add a song to your iTunes library, and you can get to it from your iPhone, iPad or computer. No copying, just available everywhere. The iCloud Beta announcement happened on Monday, June 6 at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.

Apple does have a history of launching products that already have established names, only to reach an agreement after the product launch. Apple was also hit with a lawsuit by Cisco over the iPhone name, but eventually settled out of court; and the iPad name was owned by Fujitsu. Most famously, the name of the Beatles record label was Apple Corp, but the computer version of Apple and the Beatles version of Apple worked it out.

Check out more about steaming music sites in the Spacelab Streaming Music Guide.