Business: Through trademark, Tecg Gants keep Jamaica ahead of the product curve

Apple’s product launches are notoriously secretive, but the Cupertino, California tech giant is sure to do one thing ahead of a big reveal: file trademark paperwork in Jamaica.

It did this for Siri, the Apple Watch, macOS, and dozens of its major products months before the equivalent paperwork was lodged in the United States. Likewise, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft routinely file trademarks for their most important products in locales far flung from Silicon Valley and Seattle. These include Jamaica, Tonga, Iceland, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago—places where trademark authorities don’t maintain easily searchable databases.

The tech giants are exploiting a US trademark-law provision that lets them effectively claim a trademark in secret. Under this provision, once a mark is lodged with an intellectual property office outside the US, the firm has six months to file it with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). When the firm does file in the US, it can point to its original application made abroad to show that it has a priority claim on the mark.

In the meantime, though, the provision prevents competitors from guessing at a firm’s product plans from public filings. “Competitors could search, ‘What has Apple filed for? What are they thinking about?'” says Nehal Madhani of legal-software provider Alt Legal, who has researched the issue. Think of it as arbitraging global intellectual-property laws.

The filings made overseas aren’t, of course, actually secret—they’re just not easy to access if you can’t go in person. For instance, the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office allows visitors to search filings in person at its office in Kingston. People can also ask the office to search filings for them, but a Jamaican address is required to receive the results, and the process takes three weeks. A lawyer in Jamaica, however, can be appointed to perform the search, the office told Quartz. It said it has no current plans to put its filings database online. Alt Legal compiled a list of 65 other countries with offline trademark databases like Jamaica’s.

Each tech company seems to prefer a particular country for its trademark applications. We compiled registration data going back to 2010 on Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and charted the countries where they first filed trademarks:

Music: With Competing Streaming Services, Jay, Drake start "Digital Beef"

By now you’ve heard that Apple has recently jumped on the subscription-based streaming bandwagon. On Monday, the company revealed its new initiative, Apple Music, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. The service is said to launch June 30 and will cost subscribers $9.99-$14.99 a month. Of course, launching a music initiative wouldn’t be complete without the presence of a mega-star to co-sign. Apple went with Drizzy (or rather, Drizzy went with Apple). Rocking a throwback Apple jacket, Aubrey “Drake” Graham aligned himself with Team Apple during an endearing keynote speech. “As an artist I can say, for all those kids sitting at home, it is truly amazing to be a part of something that I believe in.” Drake continued, “This is something that simplifies everything for the modern musician like myself, and the modern consumer like you.” Aubrey, your training on Degrassi has done you well.
Here’s the shade: In late March, Jay Z announced his quite similar initiative, Tidal, on a star-studded stage (We see you, Madonna!). Hov’s fancy streaming service will charge subscribers $9.99-$19.99 a month and boasts high-fidelity audio along with artist exclusives, as incentives. According to Billboard, Drake was initially courted by Tidal. The rapper was slated to be an artist partner with the company, but dropped-out last minute—as late as two days prior to Tidal’s launch. Fast forward to June and Drizzy claps back with a major endorsement for Apple Music.
So the rivalry ensues.
We’ve entered a new era in the music industry. It comes with a distinct turf war, and it’s happening online. Today, file sharing and new technologies have redirected the interests of rappers, and the arena in which they battle. Artists like Jay Z and Drake will gain dominance through commerciality, streaming supremacy, and aligning themselves with the right brand. This is the new hip-hop rivalry in the Internet age: Drizzy vs. Hov, gone digital.   

In the present, a perfectly crafted rap song (even songs that take shots at other rappers and fill up tabloid columns) doesn’t have the same effect, in terms of profitability.

“Beef” is pretty common in hip-hop, an arena that is as much about swagger and braggadocio as it is street poetry. And hip-hop rivalries have been ever-present: Back in the day, B-boys and B-girls would battle on the dance floor and MC’s would lay down a pithy verse or two for anyone that tried to “step” to them. For as long as there are wack rappers there will always be another, perhaps more talented, rapper to check him/her and remind them of their wackness. Rappers were also targeted based on where they lived. Old-school notions of owning the streets was key.
Feuds in the realm of rap were often driven by battles over turf, or a struggle to establish a dominant community, and neighborhood. And your ’hood dictated your clique.
One of hip-hop’s most prolific beefs boiled down to a competition of the coasts: East vs. West. Twenty years ago, the dominant names in hip-hop were The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. The rappers took shots at each other (and crew members), one line at a time. Biggie’s “Who Shot Ya” poured salt on a (literally) wounded Tupac just after he was shot in New York. Tupac’s “Hit Em Up” took no prisoners, with the face of Death Row Records bragging that he’d slept with Biggie’s wife, and would be Tupac’s last diss track before his death. B.I.G. and Pac led the lives they depicted in their music, and repped their ’hoods til the days they were gunned down.
Jay Z is no stranger to a good old hip-hop battle. In 2001, Hov went head-to-head with Queens rapper Nas. This was yet another classic hip-hop beef. The rivalry was, once again, based on territoriality and crew control: Nas’s group The Firm vs. Jay Z’s Roc-A-Fella. “Ether,” the 2001 track aimed at Jay, also attempted to establish borough dominance: “Queens niggas run y’all niggas, ask Russell Simmons,” said Nas.

localjoe.myorganogold.com

Music: Apple Enters the Streaming Universe Tomorrow

Music CEO Doug Morris told reporters that Apple will officially announce its streaming platform on Monday. 
Morris's appearance at Midem saw the music industry titan discussing his legendary career, including his decades-long partnership with Jimmy Iovine — the Beats co-founder who is now running Apple's streaming service alongside Dr. Dre. Morris praised Apple's foray into the controversial streaming world, calling their Beats buyout a "brilliant" move.
Morris noted that purported market leaders like Spotify have "never really advertised" because they're simply not profitable, a facet of the streaming model Apple will reportedly not emulate in any way, shape, or form. "[Apple]'s got $178 billion dollars in the bank and they have 800 million credit cards in iTunes," Morris said. "My guess is that Apple will promote this like crazy and I think that will have a halo effect on the streaming business [industry]."

 The rumors surrounding Apple's streaming service — often referred to as Apple Music — have been plentiful, with a few of them already officially addressed. As previously reported, Drake and Pharrell have been confirmed in unspecified positions within Apple's streaming framework — joining former BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe and Oscar-winner Trent Reznor. Last month, fresh rumors surrounding Kanye West's SWISH (the album formerly known as So Help Me God) pointed to a partnership involving an Apple investment in West's creative company DONDA and an Apple-exclusive status for the new album.

localjoe.myorganogold.com

Watches: The Coming Smartwatch Glut

Launching the Huawei watch

A funny thing happened on the way to the expected launch event for the Apple Watch on March 9 — a number of high-profile tech competitors have all launched competing versions of a smartwatch in just the past two weeks. And that’s in addition to all the smartwatches that already exist in the market, such as the Moto 360.

The new offering that everyone’s talking about, of course, is the Pebble Time, which has raised over $15.5 million on Kickstarter (including the first $1 million in less than one hour) to create a new smartwatch. The Pebble Time may appeal to a lower end of the smartwatch market than the Apple Watch, but there will soon be a new version that comes in beautiful gleaming steel.There’s also Huawei (Who? What?), which became the breakout star of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with a high-end smartwatch that’s being marketed the same way the Apple Watch is — as more of a fashion accessory than a new tech device. And there’s also LG, which now has a beautiful new LG Watch Urbane, also announced this month.

Music: Apple Bites into Taylor Swift

Apple is buying Taylor Swift's record label Big Machine for $250 million. At least that's the report that's surfaced from Hits Daily Double, an old school music industry site that still has connections inside the major labels. Apple has denied the report, which could mean anything. But the idea of Apple investing $250 million or more in a record label is not a far fetched as it might sound. Here are four reasons why:

1) Exclusives -  If the only (or at least the first) place you can stream or buy music for your favorite artist is iTunes, Spotify and everyone else is instantly at a disadvantage. U2, The Beatles and Coldplay already have cosy relationships with Apple. 

2) Equal Playing Field - It used to be that artists needed record labels. Labels put music in stores and songs on the radio. Now artists need money and exposure. Apple can offer plenty of both.   

3) Executives - Before joining Apple's team, Jimmy Iovine was one of the most successful music executives in modern times; and new Cupertino staffers Dr. Dre, Ian Rogers and Trent Reznor each add to the mix.

4) Equity -  Apple buying a record label would upset other labels, right?  Actually, the major labels can't cry foul.  After all, they've taken significant equity positions Apple's music streaming competitor Spotify, were much of the cash behind Vevo and continue to invest in other music tech companies.

-Hypebot/Hits Daily Double