Last week, a story appeared on blogs and news sites about how the U.S. Patent Office “rejected” Apple’s request to trademark the word “iPad mini” because it was too descriptive of the product. None of this is true, of course.
In November 2012, Apple filed a trademark application for the “iPad mini,” as it had done for the “iPad” earlier. In January 2013, the Office responded in a formal manner, rejecting the application, without outright denying the trademark. All Apple had to do was slightly amend the application to comply with the Office’s requirements, a matter that took the company’s lawyers a few hours.
It seems that this did not happen either! The Office's database does not show any written response from Apple. The communication was probably made by phone and the whole "confusion" was resolved within a few minutes. The Office has now attributed the request for the acquisition of the term "iPad mini" to Apple, asking the company only to submit a disclaimer to the Office (and not in advertising content) about the fact that it is requesting the rights to the term "iPad mini" and not to the term "mini".
Dimitrios Georgoulas @ GreekAppleNews
