Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) now owns a little piece of rock-and-roll history. On Wednesday, the Cupertino-based company was granted ownership of the Apple Corps Logo.
The tech giant battled another company called Apple Box Productions for rights to the logo, and reached a settlement in 2007. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until recently that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) garnered the rights to the Apple Corps Logo.
During the battle in the courtroom, the late Steve Jobs explained why his company wanted this particular logo, “we love The Beatles, and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks. it feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future.”
The history between Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Apple Corps is very interesting. Back in 1978, Apple Records filed a lawsuit against Apple Computer over the trademark. Apple Corps won the lawsuit several years later, and was owed a payment of $80,000 by Apple Computers. The tech giant also agreed not to get involved in the music industry then. Eight years later, another lawsuit rose as Apple Corps claimed that Apple computers could play MIDI music and that violated their original agreement. In 1991, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was forced to cough up $26.5 million. 12 years later in 2003, Apple Corps went after Apple again, this time it was over iPod MP3 players and the iTunes store, both of which violated the original agreement. The trial started and ended in 2006, this time the ruling was in favor of Apple and in 2007, the settlement was issued. The tech giant would get complete ownership rights of the Apple Corps trademark and logo.
Apple’s patience and persistence has gained them a lot in all the years they’ve been in business. What started out as a small, burgeoning computer company as turned into a tech giant that’s unstoppable.