Tiger Lawsuits

Tiger Lawsuits
Posted :: May 4, 2005 by Impact

A few days ago (the day before the Mac OSX.4 'Tiger' release), TigerDirect (a PC components retailer) filed lawsuits against the new release of Mac OSX. TigerDirect owns the rights to the name 'Tiger', which would normally put them in a good place. However, they decided to wait until a day before the release of Tiger (after a ton of publicity had been published with the name Tiger), which was a bit of a low-blow.

A few days later, Robert Young, co-founder of Red Hat Linux decided to step in and help out. Young called the suit "a load of codswallop", and added "Nobody and no company should have the exclusive use of the word 'tiger.'". Robert Young just so happens to own the Hamilton Tiger-Cats (a Canadian football team). The Mr. Young has offered to license the Hamilton Tiger-Cats' historical use of the word Tiger to Apple free of charge. The Hamilton Tigers Football Club, established in 1869, continued to be known as the Tigers until 1950, when the Tigers merged with the Hamilton Wildcats to become the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

I'm glad to see someone stand up against this type of thing. If TigerDirect had wanted to stop the use of the name Tiger, they would have filed suit when the first publicity using the name Tiger was put out. They should not have waited until the last day before doing so.