14 DAY TRIAL // If there's a thing that I consider to be really hard, once it has started, that thing is a legal battle. I can only imagine how many people are involved in such things when it's about companies, and I for one do my best to avoid such situations. From what I've been able to hear lately, it seems that Apple's legal staff has a lot of things to do these days, and hearing that at least one of their large number of suits got to a happy ending is something that I would like to see happening more often...
Getting back in time, 25 years ago, we find a Steve Jobs that was admonished legally by Apple Corps Ltd., the parent and music company founded by The Beatles, for using the Apple name. Being famous for how protective they are with their Registered Trademarks, The Beatles have sued many others for even smaller things. The end of that story was that Jobs and Apple signed an agreement to never go into the music business of any kind, but "never" is something really relative in the computer world...
Despite the fact that Jobs is a big Beatles fan, this didn't stop them from dragging his company into another legal battle that was worth 26 million dollars paid to the Beatles and another agreement, in 1991 this time, that Apple is not going to do it again, and analysts at Fox News estimate that this new battle's total costs for Apple were in fact 50 million.
Now, 15 years later, the tide has finally turned, and they got a new deal, although having confidential terms. The conclusion is that Apple Inc. will own all the trademarks related to "Apple" and will license some of them back to Apple Corps for continued use. The legal battle is now over, and each party is going to pay for its own costs, but since Apple Inc. will continue to use its name and logos on iTunes, this is a clear victory for Steve Jobs' company.
"We love the Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future", said Jobs, and since this part finished well, the next step is to see The Beatles available on iTunes. No matter how much Apple has to pay for its name, I am sure that in the end everybody will have something to gain, especially the iTunes users that may get access to the Beatles catalog in a digital format for the first time in history.