ELS has filed a lawsuit against Apple on September 20th in a US District Court in Florida after unsuccessful negotiations with Apple over Apple's unauthorized use of ELS’ trademark "Mac Manager."

The suit alleges that Apple willfully infringed ELS' trademark rights in 'Mac Manager' by adopting a confusingly similar mark for the same type of software product. The suit also alleges dilution, unfair competition, and injury to business reputation.

ELS says it has been selling its desktop security product under the Mac Manager name for over six years. ELS' product has special appeal to the education
industry where network administrators in shared-Mac environments need to
control user access to files. Apple has competed with ELS in this area for many
years with Apple's "At Ease" and "At Ease for Workgroups" desktop security
products directed specifically to the home and education markets, according to ELS.

Apple then replaced its At Ease product with "MACINTOSH MANAGER" as part of its new OS X Server operating system, which lead to confusion according to the press release. ELS says that "soon after Apple’s adoption of the new name, customers began mistakenly contacting ELS to report problems with 'Mac Manager' and that it was forced to explain that the problems were with Apple’s MACINTOSH MANAGER and not its Mac Manager product

ELS says it has over 100 pages of emails, web sites, and mail list postings documenting the severity of confusion and the company receives complaints
almost on a daily basis. "Maybe it would not be so bad if it was good press;
but all I hear is how bad the Mac Manager product is. I couldn’t give away
my product now. Apple has essentially put me out of business."

ELS says it gave Apple every opportunity to resolve this dispute without litigation; however, "Apple just didn’t take us seriously. Filing this action, however, should be a clear sign that ELS is serious about enforcing its rights."

by MacNN Staff