14 DAY TRIAL // A trademark with a similar name registered back in 2003 interferes with Apple's plans 11 years later.
According to Patently Apple, the US Patent and Trademark Office has published an official letter that was sent to Apple back in May of 2014. It was their refusal to accept the tech giant's application for the "Touch ID" trademark. Apple has six months to come back with a different trademark or to find a workaround to register this one.
The refusal issued by the trademark examiner is based on "Likelihood of Confusion." In fact, back on July 8, 2003, a company named Kronos Touch ID has registered a trademark with their name for a "security data terminal having fingerprint recognition, hardware and software." However, the old claim did not request the Office to register the "Touch ID" name as a separate trademark.
According to the US law (The Trademark Act, in this case), there are a few factors that may determine the US Patent Office to dismiss a claim: similarity of the marks, similarity of the goods and/or services, and similarity of trade channels of the goods and services.
Apple has now until November 7, 2014, to come up with a different name for this trademark or go to this Kronos Touch ID company and present them with an offer they can't refuse.
Another solution for Apple is to use only one of the words – either "Touch" or "ID" in combination with another word. They could call it "Apple ID" or "Magic Touch" and get away with it, unless there's already a trademark for either of those combinations.
Kronos (.pdf document) is apparently a Canadian company that has multiple innovations in automatic door opening using an employee badge. In a document highlighting the Kronos Touch ID, they explain how they've changed the way employees used to punch somebody else's card in order to time the work clock. Their terminals are using fingerprint scanning along with the swipe of a card to recognize the employee.
In their internal documents, Kronos uses "Touch ID" as is, not with their company name, so Apple's new fingerprint scanner may indeed cause confusion.
However, the Kronos Touch ID system is a big box with a lot of buttons and Apple's is a round button covered with sapphire glass and with a steel ring around it.