Spigen claims “Essential” Phone Infringes its Trademark Name

If you knew Andy Rubin – the co-founder of Android, and followed his activity recently, you’d know about his new company called Essential Products. As well his new smartphone the Essential Phone.

The Essential Phone indeed has some appealing features such as very slim bezels around the display, a necked-shape cut through display for front-camera. With the titanium built frame and ceramic back the phone actually gathered a lot of praises.

But when some popularity comes, it brings the attentions in a negative way too. Where some of them might be the false attempts to defame a specific brand, some of them may have truth as well. In this case, it seems the Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone might have infringed the brand name “Essential” owned by some other party.

Spigen – a manufacturer of smartphone accessories, claims that “Essential” is trademarked brand name for a line of its accessories. Hence, the company accuses Essential Products of infringing its trademark. The company, however, doesn’t produce smartphones but accessories for them, it states that the situation will cause confusion to its customers. Spigen has already sent a cease and desist letter to Essential Products and have asked them to stop using a name that it has trademarked.

Essential Phone — Full Specifications, Price and Availability

Essential Products have not responded over the matter yet. On the ground reality the term “Essential” is too broad in context but there are examples of such words being registered. So possibly, Spigen might have the sole rights to use the name and they are using ® sign with their “Essential” line of accessories — at least now.

The matter also has some truth into it as there have been reports of Andy Rubin being denied by USPTO to use the name. Android Police reports that his new company has reportedly been refused once for registration of the name “Essential” due to the Spigen’s trademark. In fact, the company’s second application for registering “Essential Products” was also refused by USPTO for the same reasons. However, the co-creator of Android allegedly ditched the refusals and went on with using the brand name as “Essential Products”

This story is under development as a response is still awaited from the other party. If you were getting to excited about the new Essential Phone, you might also be interested to know the company’s fate regarding its name.