On October 9, 1991, Apple Records settled one of its many lawsuits with Apple Computer. It wasn’t the first time the two companies tangled. Nor would it be the last. Apple Records was the Beatles’ record label. Apple Computer was, of course, a maker of computers. It was the nature of one of those computers that got Apple Computer into trouble.
How Apple drew the ire of the Beatles
In 1977, Beatles guitarist George Harrison became aware of a computer company in the United States called Apple Computer. He alerted the staff at the record label. Apple Corps did what trademark holders are supposed to do: they protected the trademark, suing Apple Computer for infringement in 1978. The two settled in 1981, agreeing to co-exist by staying out of one anothers’ business. Apple Corps would stick to entertainment while Apple Computer would stick to making computers. Part of the agreement was that Apple would not make equipment for making music. As part of the settlement, Apple Computer paid $80,000 for the rights to continue using the name.
No one was going to use a 1977 Apple II for making music. It was capable of making rudimentary music, playing a song a single shrill note at a time. You could get a third-party card for it to improve its sound capabilities. Equipped with a Mockingboard, a sound card based on the AY-3-8910 chip, the Apple II could make pretty good music. But the Mockingboard wasn’t an Apple product, so Apple could say that was beyond their control.
But in 1986, Apple released the Apple IIgs, a computer that contained an Ensoniq sound chip in it. It was a computer and an Ensoniq synthesizer in one. The existence of MIDI, which allowed computers to control instruments, was problematic as well, but MIDI wasn’t an Apple invention. It was an industry standard. Apple sold a MIDI interface, but if Apple hadn’t made one, someone else absolutely would have. Commodore didn’t make MIDI interfaces for its computers, so other companies did.
The Apple IIgs was the bridge too far, I’d argue. It used the same sound chip Ensoniq used in its Mirage and ESQ-1 pro audio synthesizers. This was a computer that musicians would buy even if they weren’t going to use MIDI. With the right software, even without MIDI it could be like having two keyboard players playing behind you. My 8th and 9th grade music teachers both owned one, and that 8th grade teacher in particular was very hostile towards computers in general. In her mind, that synthesizer chip was what made a computer worth having.
Apple Computer was bitter about the lawsuit, and a bit defiant. The alert sound in the Macintosh’s 1991 operating system was officially titled “Sosumi.” Pronounced “so sue me.”
How Apple Computer and Apple Records made peace
On October 9, 1991, Apple Computer and Apple Corps settled. Apple Computer paid $26.5 million in damages. Apple Corps’ line of business became “creative works whose principal content is music,” while Apple Computer gained the right to build and sell products that “reproduce, run, play or otherwise deliver such content.”
That meant the Apple IIGS was OK. An Apple IIGS or a Mac with a MIDI interface controlling keyboards and drum machines was OK too. An MP3 player would also be OK. But I think you can see where I’m going here.
A digital music store sounds like it might cross the line, right? Apple Corps thought so, which led to another lawsuit. Apple Computer won that court case in 2006, with another settlement happening in 2007.
So if you wonder why it took a while for Beatles music to show up in iTunes, the legal history probably has something to do with it. If Jobs and Wozniak had chosen the name of a different fruit like, say, Apricot, the two companies’ history would probably be very different.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
Part of the problem was caused by differences between US and British trademark law. In the US, trademark is “use it or lose it”, and Apple Corps hadn’t used their trademark for years. Under US law it was a dead trademark, and Apple Computer would have been free to use the name for ANY purpose.
But in British law, trademark is forever. Despite the fact that Apple Corps had conducted no business activity for years, they still had the right to the name, and thus the right to extort money from Apple Computer — multiple times. I believe that they should have gotten NOTHING from any of the suits.
The UK Parliament passed the Trade Marks Act 1994 after which trademarks in England and Wales last ten years and have to be re-registered at cost thereafter. But Apple Corps must have brought this case under the old 1930s system which was still in force at the time.
Apple IIGS had better sound and color graphics and GUI vs Mac, in 1987,
why buy Mac when IIgs was better?
I spent a whole section of the blog post answering that question.
so um
do you prefer the Tandy 1000 tl or Apple IIGS