Apple began their dealings with Independent music labels back in 2004 by signing up three European labels. Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs stated at that time that Apple was thrilled to be adding three of Europe’s largest indie labels to our iTunes Music Store in the UK, France and Germany. “We welcome Beggars, Sanctuary and V2 to the iTunes family, and plan to add many more independent labels soon.” In September of this year, Pure Play Music announced that it had reached a digital distribution deal to bring its catalogue of 1.5 million tracks from unsigned artists to iTunes. Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office published Apple’s latest trademark application for Indie Spotlight under application 77599187. Apple filed the application under International Classes 35 and 41 which are detailed below. In addition, Apple’s application added an Indie Spotlight screenshot, which first appeared in their iTunes Store in 2006.

International Class Details

Apple’s latest trademark filling covers the following International Classification details.

International Class 035: Retail store services in the field of entertainment, namely, musical works provided via the internet and other computer and electronic communication networks.

International Class 041: Publication services, namely providing electronic periodicals and editorial content in the field of entertainment; entertainment services, namely, providing prerecorded musical works and information, reviews and commentary online in the field of entertainment.

A Podcastgo Trademark Follow-up Report

On September 9, 2008 the MacNN patent blog posted a report titled: Apple’s ‘Podcastgo’ Trademark Remains a Mystery. Since that report was filed, the Singapore Trademark office has in fact made a change in the sequence of hyperlinks regarding Apple’s Podcastgo trademark filing. The original report presented a second screenshot that presented a clearly marked link to the Trademark number T0620256D. Information related to that particular link lead to the confusion as to the ownership of the trademark. The names PodcastGo Inc. and AMP1 Productions, Inc. were shown to own the trademark within an Apple trademark application. The specific link that caused the original confusion has now been removed.

For now, it would appear that the mystery surrounding this trademark has now been resolved. The record now ends with Apple Inc. shown to be the only registered owner of the Podcastgo trademark.

NOTICE: MacNN presents only a brief summary of patents and/or trademarks with associated graphic(s) for journalistic news purposes as each such patent application and/or grant is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trade Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any patent and/or trademark applications and/or grants should be read in its entirety for further details.

Written and researched by Jack Purcher.