The not-so-Mighty Mouse
October 8, 2009 by Robin Parrish
Filed under Electronics
Apple has officially lost the right to use “Mighty Mouse” as the name of its current-gen iMac mouse. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the trademark for that name to a different company.
Apple’s Mighty Mouse first arrived in mid-2005 as a peripheral exclusively for use with Mac OS X. It was met with mixed reviews, which over time have turned decidedly negative. Users have been turned off by the non-useful side buttons, the on-again-off-again Bluetooth connection the wireless Mighty Mouse has with the iMac, and the problematic track ball on top.
Apple has been busy of late filing patents for a new kind of mouse that uses multitouch gestures, and it looks like the new device couldn’t come a minute too soon. A company called Man & Machine has been using the term “Mighty Mouse” to describe one of its products for five years — predating Apple’s clicker by a year — and sued Apple for the name in May of 2008. The Patent Office has ruled this week that Man & Machine is the sole owner of the trademark.
Image: Apple, Inc.
