Google’s application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to trademark the term “Nexus One” was denied today because of the likelihood of confusion. Filed a year too late, Google was unable to get a trade mark on its Android 2.1 smart phone. In December of 2008 Integra Telecom registered the trademark for its Nexus fixed bandwidth integrated voice and Internet T1 product. In return Google attempted to file an application for its trademark back in December 2009, making it a little late for them to achieve.
The USPTO made its decision based on the similarity of the trademarks, similarity of the goods/services as they are technology related, and their relationship in trading within the digital world.
According to a recent interview, Integra released that 60 million dollars of its yearly sales is associated to its Nexus brand. What does that mean to Google? Well, Google can simply contest to the ruling and in return pay Integra a large sum of money to utilize the Nexus name. However, due to the lack of Google marketing to the new smartphone, Google will most likely drop the Nexus One name without the fear of any future damages.
How can that be possible? Well if we compare the current advertising campaign that Verizon spent on its Motorola Droid mobile phone, we can clearly see that the Nexus One is no where near the number of sales the Motorola has achieved. According to Verizon, over 1 million sales have been made in the past 74 days in comparison to the 135,000 sales to the Google Nexus One mobile phone.
However, Google released that the number of sales has been on the rise within the last few months. Google mentioned that a hike of double sales is in effect from 30,000 Daily Sales to 65,000 daily unit sales from last month. Where will the Nexus One go? What do you think the next name for the Google Phone will be? I will keep you guys posted!