An app that allows people to play a virtual trumpet on their iPhones has won a major trademark case against The Trump Organization over the use of the word ‘iTrump’.
The iTrump app was created by San Francisco-based musician Tom Scharfeld back in 2011. As Bloomberg reports, it wasn’t long before Scharfeld received a very strongly-worded email from Trump’s lawyers demanding that he change the name.
Scharfeld did not change the name, and now six years later the lone app developer has not only beaten The Trump Organization in court, but even forced them to lose a few trademarks that they already held.
According to the filing it has now also been banned from being able to use the word ‘Trump’ in relation to a number of entertainment services including computer games and, interestingly some golf-related features as well.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Scharfeld believes that one of the reasons he was able to beat such a large organisation was because they, “didn’t seem to respect that I could do this.”
By representing himself, Scharfeld effectively had to teach himself trademark law while at the same time going up against the kind of legal tactics that large organisations usually only reserve for the biggest court battles.
Speaking to the news organisation Scharfeld describes how his interactions with Trump’s legal team would vary wildly between being uncooperative to overly cooperative to the point at which he would be send thousands of documents, designed presumably to overwhelm the developer and thus put him off pursuing the claim.