Apple Computer, Inc. (Rare Prototype Specimen with Apple Trademark) - California

Beautifully engraved specimen certificate from the Apple Computer printed in 1980. This historic document was printed by Security-Columbian Bank Note Company and has an ornate border with a vignette of the Apple Logo and an Apple II computer. This item has the printed signatures of the Company's First President, Michael M. Smith and Secretary and is over 26 years old. What makes this so rare and unusual it that it has the registered trademark notation next to the Apple logo. Shortly after this was printed, there was the dispute and settlement between Apple Computer and the Beatles Company, Apple Records. As a result of their agreement, Apple Computer couldn't put the trademark registration next to their logo and it was removed before any certificates were actually issued. We have only seen one other of these certificates with the trademark notation and believe this to be quite rare. This is the only one we have.


Certificate Vignette with Trademark Notation


Certificate Vignette

Apple went public on December 12, 1980. Within days, the price of a share of Apple stock went from twenty-two dollars to twenty-nine. Apple was the most successful initial public offering since Ford Motor Company went public in 1956. Apple hit the Fortune 500 faster than any company had previously done, and soon was worth more than many major corporations.

1975 to 1980 - The founding of Apple

Founding and Apple I The rise of Apple Computer is one of America's great success stories. Based on the business and technical savvy of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and the marketing expertise of Mike Markkula, Apple dominated the personal computer industry from 1977 to 1983.

Jobs and Wozniak, ("the two Steves") had been friends since 1972. Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a personal computer and selling it. Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, who, after Jobs' famous persuasion, ordered fifty units and paid $500 for each unit. Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items including a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure the parts needed while Wozniak and another friend, Ronald Wayne, assembled the Apple I.

Apple Computer was thus founded in Los Altos, California on April 1, 1976 (and incorporated January 3, 1977) by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit at $666.66. They were hand-built in Jobs's parents' garage, and the Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club.

The Apple I was delivered in June, and paid for on delivery. Eventually 200 Apple I computers were built.

Note that the original Apple I was simply a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips), not a full computer as we know it today.

The Apple II The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire.

The Apple II was one of three personal computers launched in 1977. Despite its higher price, it quickly pulled away from the other two, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to lead the pack in the late 70s and to become the symbol of the personal computing phenomenon.

Unlike the TRS-80, the Apple II was of high quality and featured a number of technical advantages. It had an open architecture, used color graphics, and most importantly, had an elegantly designed interface to a floppy disk drive, something only mainframes and minis had used for storage until then.

Another key to success was the software: the Apple II was chosen by entrepreneurs Daniel Bricklin and Bob Frankston to be the desktop platform for the first "killer app" of the business world — the VisiCalc spreadsheet program. That created a phenomenal business market for the Apple II; and the corporate presence attracted many software and hardware developers to the machine. (See the timeline for dates of Apple II family model releases—the 1977 Apple II and its younger siblings, the II Plus, IIe, IIc and IIGS.)

More than 2 million Apple II's were shipped at a price of $970 for the 4KB model.

Apple III By now, Jobs and his partners had a staff of computer designers and a production line. The Apple II was succeeded by the Apple III in May 1980 as the company struggled to compete against IBM and Microsoft in the lucrative business and corporate computing market. The designers of the Apple III were forced to comply with Jobs' request to omit the cooling fan, and this ultimately resulted in thousands of recalled units due to overheating. An updated version was introduced in 1983 but it was also a failure due to bad press and discouraged buyers. Nevertheless, the principals of the company persevered with further innovations and marketing.

The IBM PC In the early 1980s, IBM and Microsoft continued to gain market share at Apple's expense in the personal computer industry. Using a fundamentally different business model, IBM marketed an open hardware standard created with the IBM PC, which was bundled with Microsoft's MS-DOS (MicroSoft-Disk Operating System).

1981 to 1989 - Lisa and Macintosh

The protagonist of Apple's well known 1984 ad, set in a dystopian future modeled after the Orwellian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Xerox PARC Jobs and several other Apple employees including Jef Raskin visited Xerox PARC in December 1979, to see the Alto computer. Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for selling them one million dollars in pre-IPO Apple stock (approximately $18 million net).

The Lisa Jobs was immediately convinced that all future computers would use a graphical user interface (GUI), and decided to take over design of Apple's first project, The Apple Lisa, to produce such a machine. He was eventually pushed from the group due to infighting, and instead took over Jef Raskin's low-cost computer project. Branding the new effort as the product that would "save Apple", an intense turf war broke out between the Lisa's "corporate shirts" and Job's Macintosh "pirates", both teams claiming they would ship first and be more successful.

In 1983 the Lisa team won the race, and Apple introduced the first personal computer to be sold to the public with a graphical user interface (GUI), named the Lisa. However, the Lisa was a commercial failure as a result of its high price tag ($9995) and limited software titles.

The 1984 commercial In 1984, drawing upon its experience with the Apple Lisa, Apple Computer next launched the Apple Macintosh. Its debut was announced by a single broadcast of the now famous $1.5 million television commercial, "1984", based on George Orwell's novel 1984. The commercial was created by Ridley Scott and screened during the 1984 Super Bowl XVIII. Steve Jobs' intention with the ad was to equate Big Brother with the IBM PC and a nameless female action hero, portrayed by Anya Major, with the Apple Macintosh.

The Mac While it initially sold well, follow-up sales were not particularly strong. The machine's fortunes changed with the introduction of the LaserWriter, the first laser printer to be offered at a reasonable price point, and PageMaker, an early desktop publishing (DTP) package. The Mac was particularly powerful in this market due to its advanced graphics capabilities, a side-effect of the GUI, and it can be said that the combination of these three products are responsible for the creation of the DTP market. As DTP became widespread, Apple's sales reached a series of new highs.

Windows In anticipation of the Macintosh launch, Bill Gates, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft, was given several Macintosh prototypes in 1983 to develop software for the "Mac". In 1985, Microsoft launched Microsoft Windows, with its own GUI for IBM PCs using many of the elements of the Macintosh OS.

Sculley, Jobs, and NeXT An internal power struggle developed between Jobs and new CEO John Sculley in 1985. Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley, and Jobs was asked to resign from the company. Jobs then founded NeXT Inc., a computer company that built machines with futuristic designs and ran the UNIX-derived NEXTSTEP operating system. Although powerful, NeXT computers never caught on with buyers, due in part to their high purchase price.

1989 to 1991 - the Golden Age Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple turned to industrial designers and adopted a product strategy based in three portable devices. One portable was built by Sony, which had a strong reputation for designing small, durable and functional electronics devices. Sony took the specs of the Mac Portable, put in a smaller two-hour battery, a much smaller (physically) twenty megabyte hard drive and a smaller nine-inch passive matrix screen.

Called the PowerBook 100, this landmark product was introduced in 1991 and established the modern form and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. This solidified Apple's reputation as a quality manufacturer, both of desktop and now portable machines.

The same year, Apple introduced a massive upgrade to the Macintosh operating system, in the form of System 7. Although resource-hungry (for the era), System 7 dramatically improved the Macintosh experience, adding color to the interface, simplifying common operations, and introducing a number of powerful new networking capabilities. System 7 would be the basis for the Mac OS until 2001.

The success of the PowerBook and several other Apple products during this period led to increasing revenue. The computer press listened to Apple press releases with rapt attention, and speculation was rife about what projects from Apple's famed Advanced Technology Group would next come to market. Apple merely had to mention a technology, Taligent for instance, for people to christen it the "new standard".

For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing new products that were the best on the market, and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 to 1991 the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.

Downturn The introduction of Microsoft Windows presented an interface that many people thought was close enough or superior to the Macintosh in terms of ease of use and overall look and feel. Combined with low-cost hardware and an improving software suite, an increasing number of potential customers turned to the "Wintel" standard instead.

Apple, relying on their high profit margins to maintain their massive R&D; budget, never developed a clear response. Instead they decided that Windows was too close, and sued Microsoft for theft of intellectual property. The lawsuit dragged on for years before finally being thrown out of court.

Worse, the lawsuit distracted management while a deep rot developed within the engineering ranks, which became increasingly unmanageable. At first there was little outward sign of the problem, but a series of major product flops and missed deadlines destroyed Apple's reputation of invincibility.

At about the same time, Apple branched out into consumer electronics. One example of this product diversification was the Apple QuickTake digital camera (which never caught on). A more famous example was the Newton, coined a PDA by Sculley, that was introduced in 1993. Though it failed commercially, it defined and launched the new category of computing and was a forerunner and inspiration of devices such as Palm Pilot and PocketPC.

During the 1990s, Apple greatly expanded its computer lineup as well. It offered a multitude of different models, yet it failed to adequately explain to the public why it should choose one model over another. The costs involved in making such a wide variety of products, coupled with some highly-publicized product recalls and the growing popularity of Microsoft Windows, all lead to the near-bankruptcy of Apple in the mid-to-late 1990s.

When at one time the industry hung on every word from Apple, by the mid-90s many considered them to be irrelevant.

1994 to 1997 - Attempts at reinvention By the mid-1990s, Apple realized that it had to reinvent the Macintosh in order to stay competitive in the market. The needs of both computer users and computer programs were becoming, for a variety of technical reasons, harder for the existing hardware and operating system to address.

In 1994, Apple surprised its loyalists by allying with its long-time competitor IBM and Motorola in the so-called AIM alliance. This was a bid to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform or PReP) which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft, which had become Apple's chief competitor.

As the first step toward launching the PReP platform, Apple started the Power Macintosh line in 1994, using IBM's PowerPC processor. This processor utilized a RISC architecture, which differed substantially from the Motorola 68k series that had been used by all previous Macs. Apple's OS's were rewritten so that most software for the older Macs could run on the PowerPC series (in emulation).

Throughout the mid to late 1990s, Apple tried to improve its operating system's multitasking and memory management. After first attempting to modify its existing code, Apple realized that it would be better to start with an entirely new operating system and then modify it to fit the Macintosh interface. Apple did some preliminary work with IBM towards this goal with the Taligent project, but that project never produced a replacement operating system. A new internal effort, Copland, ran afoul of Apple's now uncontrollable engineering and became a massive failure.

They then investigated using Be's BeOS, NeXT's NeXTstep OS, and also Microsoft's Windows NT OS. NeXTstep was chosen, and this supplied the platform for the modern OS X.

On February 4, 1997, Apple completed its purchase of NeXT and its NeXTstep operating system, thus bringing Steve Jobs back into Apple. On July 9, 1997, Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO of Apple by the board of directors after overseeing a 12-year record-low stock price and crippling financial losses, despite an outstanding decade of innovation. Jobs stepped in as the interim CEO and began a critical restructuring of the company's product line.

1998 to 2005 - New beginnings

Steve Jobs introducing the original iMac computer in 1998.In 1998, a year after Jobs had returned to the company, Apple introduced a new all-in-one Macintosh (echoing the original Macintosh 128K): the iMac, a new design that eliminated most Apple-standard connections like SCSI and ADB in favor of two USB ports. While technically not impressive (it was aimed at a general market), it featured an innovative new design - its translucent plastic case, originally Bondi Blue and white, and later many other colors, is considered an industrial design hallmark of the late-90s.

The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive (who later also designed the iPod). The iMac proved to be phenomenally successful, with 800,000 units sold in 1998, making the company a profit that year of $309 million - Apple's first profitable year since Michael Spindler took the position of CEO of the company in 1993. The Power Macintosh was redesigned along similar lines, and continues to evolve to this day.

At the National Association of Broadcasters Apple purchased the Final Cut software from Macromedia, beginning their entry into the digital video editing market. iMovie was released in 1999, for consumers, and Final Cut Pro was released for professionals in the same year. Final Cut Pro has gone on to be a significant video editing program. Similarly, in 2000, Apple bought Astarte's DVDirector software, which morphed into iDVD (for consumers) and DVD Studio Pro (for professionals) at the Macworld Conference and Expo of 2001.

In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X, the operating system based on NeXT's NEXTSTEP and BSD Unix. Aimed at consumers and professionals alike, OS X aims to marry the stability, reliability and security of the Unix operating system with the ease of use afforded by a completely overhauled user interface. To aid users in moving their applications from OS 9, the new operating system allowed the use of Mac OS 9 applications through OS X's Classic environment. Apple's Carbon API also allowed developers to adapt their OS 9 software to use Mac OS X's features often with a simple re-compile.

Company headquarters on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, California.In May 2001, after much speculation, Apple announced the opening of the Apple retail stores, to be located in major U.S. consumer locations. These stores were designed for two purposes: to stem the tide of Apple's declining share of the computer market and to counter a poor record of marketing Apple products by third-party retail outlets.

In late 2001, Apple introduced its first iPod portable digital audio player, a move that has proven to be phenomenally successful with over 42 million units sold even though it was not originally perceived to be a successful product.[1] Combined with a scheme to offer downloadable songs at US 99 cents per song through Apple's ITunes Music Store, there had been over 1,000,000,000 downloads for iPod players by February 2006[2].

In 2002, Apple purchased Nothing Real, and their advanced digital compositing application, Shake, raising Apple's professional commitment even higher. In the same year they also acquired Emagic, and with it, obtained their professional-quality music productivity application, Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application. With iPhoto's release in 2002 as well, this completed Apple's collection of consumer and professional level creativity software, with the consumer-level applications being collected together into the iLife suite.

With the introduction of the Power Mac G5 in June 2003, Apple abandoned flashy colors in favor of white polycarbonate for consumer lines such as the iMac and iBook, as well as the educational eMac, and anodized aluminum or titanium for professional products like the Power Mac G5, PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro, as well as the low-cost Mac mini.

On March 10, 2005 Apple Computer announced its support for Sony's Blu-Ray technology and joined the Blu-ray Disc Association, or BDA. In a keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Macintosh computers beginning in 2006.[3] Jobs confirmed rumors that the company had secretly been producing versions of its current operating system Mac OS X for both PowerPC and Intel processors for the previous five years, and that the transition to Intel processor systems would last until the end of 2007. Mac OS X is based on OPENSTEP, an operating system originally available for many platforms. Apple's own Darwin, the open source underpinnings of OS X, is also compiled for Intel's x86 architecture.[4]

Jobs surprised the industry at Macworld 2006 however, by announcing the first Intel based Apple computers would begin selling in 2006 and that the transition would be complete by the end of 2007.

2006 to present - Start of the Intel era

The new MacBook Pro is Apple's first consumer laptop with an Intel microprocessor.Main article: Apple Intel transition On January 10, 2006, Apple released its first Intel chip computers, a new notebook computer known as the MacBook Pro (a 15.4 inch laptop which replaced the PowerBook G4 line and offers a 4X speed improvement) and a new (though identical) iMac with a 2-3 times faster performance increase. Both used Intel's Core Duo chip technology.

On February 28, 2006, Apple introduced the new Intel-based Mac mini, running up to 4X faster and also featuring Front Row, available with a Core Duo or Core Solo (single core) processor. The current operating system, OS X Tiger 10.4, runs natively on the new Intel machines, as do many applications, such as iLife '06. Other applications, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop, compiled for the PowerPC, run in emulation mode, using a technology known as Rosetta. Unfortunately, Rosetta causes software to run at a considerably slower pace than many would like. Programs compiled only for the PowerPC will have to be recompiled to run at full speed on the new Intel machines.

On the other hand, the Intel chip allows the new machines to run the Windows operating system. On March 16, 2006 a bootloader CD image[1] and a how-to for getting XP on your MacBook Pro, iMac, or mini was released to the Internet as an entry into a $13,000 contest. Many hackers attempted over months to win the prize by becoming the first to run Windows natively on a new Intel Mac. The Intel-based Macintoshes are now the only Apple computers capable of running both Mac OS and Windows (and Linux) without emulation. Further, on 5 April 2006, Apple announced a new software product - Boot Camp - which allows a user with an Intel Mac to dual boot into Windows XP complete with a full range of drivers for Apple hardware. The new Boot Camp (name not finalized) will also be included, as standard, in Apple's next OS Release (10.5 - Leopard). This new release can be compared to the iPod's beginning of compatibility with Windows-based machines. In 2003,the iPod went from Mac only, to Mac and Windows. After this sales and popularity increased immensely.

The Intel-based machines do not support Classic (as it has not been translated to x86 binaries), so applications that run only in Mac OS 9 and earlier will not run on these machines.

All Macintosh product lines are expected to transition to Intel processors by the end of 2006. The Apple online store sold out of 17-inch iMac G5 computers in February 2006, Apple ended the life of its 15 inch PowerBook G4 on Wednesday the 22nd of February 2006, and the G4 Mac mini was removed from the Apple online store on the 28th of February 2006 and replaced with the Intel Core Mac mini. On the 10th of March, 2006 Apple ended the life of the 20" G5 iMac, bringing a close to the iMac G5 era.

The Apple/Intel partnership has coined a new catch-phrase among computer users: "Macintel", in response to the phrase "Wintel," an informal moniker that describes all Intel-powered systems running the Microsoft Windows operating system. This moniker has never been used seriously by Apple's PR or executives, mainly in use only in Apple fanatic circles.

Current products

The iPod is one of Apple's most successful products. The latest iPod is available in 30 or 60 GB models and is capable of playing video. Hardware Apple introduced the Apple Macintosh family in 1984 and today makes consumer, professional, and educational computers. The Mac mini is the company's consumer sub-desktop computer, introduced in January 2005 and designed to motivate Windows users to switch to the Macintosh platform. The iMac is a consumer desktop computer that was first introduced by Apple in 1998, and its popularity helped save the company from bankruptcy. Now in its third design iteration, the iMac is similar in concept to the original Macintosh in that the monitor and computer are housed in a single unit. The Power Mac G5, Apple's desktop computer for the professional and creative market, is a member of the Power Macintosh series first introduced in 1994. The eMac is/was Apple's cheaper alternative to the iMac for the education market. Apple's server range includes the Xserve, a single-processor, dual-processor, and cluster-node server range, and the Xserve RAID for server storage options.

Apple introduced the iBook consumer portable computer as a companion to the iMac; it is Apple's lowest cost portable computer. The MacBook Pro is the professional portable computer alternative to the iBook intended for the professional and creative market and replaced the PowerBook range. PowerBooks are still being manufactured and sold, but is expected that Apple will phase out both the PowerBook and iBook lines upon arrival of the heavily rumored MacBook, the low end version of the MacBook Pro and Intel-based version of the iBook. The Powerbook range was first introduced in 1991 and helped Apple's profits increase during the 1990s.

In 2001, Apple introduced the iPod digital music player and currently sells the iPod (with video), available in 30 and 60 GB models; the iPod nano, available in 1 GB, 2GB and 4 GB models; and the iPod shuffle, available in 512 MB and 1 GB models.

The Mac mini is Apple's lowest cost desktop computer.Apple sells a variety of computer accessories for Macintosh computers including the iSight video conferencing camera, the AirPort wireless networking products; Apple Cinema HD Display and Apple Displays computer displays; Mighty Mouse and Apple Wireless Mouse computer mice; the Apple Wireless Keyboard computer keyboard and the Apple USB Modem.

Software Apple independently develops computer software titles for its Mac OS X operating system. Much of the software Apple develops is bundled with its computers. An example of this is the consumer-oriented iLife software package which bundles iDVD, iMovie HD, iPhoto, iTunes, GarageBand, and iWeb. Both iTunes and a feature-limited version of the QuickTime media player are available as free downloads for both Mac OS X and Windows. For presentation and page layout, iWork is available.

Apple also offers a range of professional software titles. Their range of server software includes the Mac OS X Server operating system; Apple Remote Desktop, a remote desktop control application; WebObjects, Java Web application server; and Xsan, a Storage Area Network file system. For the professional creatives market, there is Aperture for professional RAW-format photo processing; Final Cut Studio, a video software package, as well as Final Cut Express HD, a cut-down version, for SD and HD video editors; Logic Pro, a comprehensive music toolkit, and Logic Express, its prosumer cousin; and Shake, an advanced effects composition program.

Apple also offers online services with .Mac which bundles .Mac HomePage, .Mac Mail, .Mac Groups social network service, .Mac iDisk, .Mac Backup, .Mac Sync, and Learning Center online tutorials.

---

Apple Corps v. Apple Computer

Between 1978 and 2006 there have been a number of legal disputes between Apple Corps (owned by The Beatles) and the computer manufacturer Apple Computer over competing trademark rights. In the latest dispute, the English High Court handed down a judgment on May 8, 2006 in favour of Apple Computer. The manager of Apple Corps has stated that the decision will be appealed.

History of trademark disputes

The logo of Apple Corps/Apple Records The original logo of Apple Computer, Inc.[edit] 1978 - 1981 In 1978, Apple Corps, the Beatles-founded holding company and owner of their record label, Apple Records, filed suit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement. The suit settled in 1981 with an undisclosed amount being paid to Apple Corps. This amount had been estimated to be $50–$200 million, but was later revealed to be $80,000.[1] As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business.

1986 - 1989 In 1986, Apple Computer added MIDI and audio-recording capabilities to its computers, including the advanced 5503 sound chip from famous synthesizer maker Ensoniq into the Apple IIGS line. In 1989 this led Apple Corps to sue again, claiming violation of the 1981 settlement agreement. The outcome of this litigation effectively terminated any further development of the highly profitable Apple II line, all forays by Apple Computer into the multimedia field in parallel with the Amiga at the time, and any future advanced built-in musical hardware into the Macintosh line.

1991 In 1991, another settlement involving payment of around $26.5 million to Apple Corps was reached. This time, an Apple employee named Jim Reekes had included a sampled system sound called Chimes to the Macintosh operating system, but Apple's legal department objected citing the agreement with Apple Corps. Reekes renamed the sound to sosumi, which he asserted was Japanese and meant nothing musical, but in fact can be read phonetically as "So, sue me". Outlined in the settlement was each company's respective trademark rights to the term "Apple". Apple Corps held the right to use Apple on any "creative works whose principal content is music", while Apple Computer held the right to use Apple on "goods or services...used to reproduce, run, play or otherwise deliver such content", but not on content distributed on physical media.[2] In other words, Apple Computer agreed that it would not package, sell or distribute physical music materials.

2003 - 2006 In September 2003, Apple Corps sued Apple Computer again, this time for breach of contract, in using the Apple logo in the creation and operation of Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store, which Apple Corps contended was a violation of the previous agreement. Some observers believed the wording of the previous settlement favoured Apple Computer in this case.[3] Other observers speculated that if Apple Corps was successful, Apple Computer would be forced to offer a much larger settlement, perhaps resulting in Apple Corps becoming a major shareholder in Apple Computer, or perhaps in Apple Computer splitting the iPod and related business into a separate entity.[4]

The trial opened on March 29, 2006 in England,[5] before a single judge of the High Court, Mr Justice Mann. In opening arguments, a lawyer for Apple Corps stated that in 2003, shortly before the launch of Apple Computer's on-line music store, Apple Corps rejected a $1 million offer from Apple Computer to use the Apple name on the iTunes store.

On May 8, 2006 the court ruled in favour of Apple Computer,[6][7] with Justice Mann holding that "I find no breach of the trademark agreement has been demonstrated."

The Judge focused on section 4.3 of that agreement:

4.3 The parties acknowledge that certain goods and services within the Apple Computer Field of Use are capable of delivering content within the Apple Corps Field of Use. In such case, even though Apple Corps shall have the exclusive right to use or authorize others to use the Apple Corps Marks on or in connection with content within subsection 1.3(i) or (ii) [the Apple Corps catalog and any future music], Apple Computers shall have the exclusive right to use or authorize others to use the Apple Computer Marks on or in connection with goods or services within subsection 1.2 [Apple Computer Field of Use] (such as software, hardware or broadcasting services) used to reproduce, run, play or otherwise deliver such content provided it shall not use or authorize others to use the Apple Computer Marks on or in connection with physical media delivering pre-recorded content within subsection 1.3(i) or (ii) (such as a compact disc of the Rolling Stones music). The Judge held Apple Computer's use was covered under this clause.

In response, Neil Aspinall, manager of Apple Corps, indicated that the company did not accept the decision: "With great respect to the trial judge, we consider he has reached the wrong conclusion," and announced that it would "be filing an appeal and putting the case again to the Court of Appeal." The judgment orders Apple Corps to pay Apple Computer's legal costs at an estimated £2m, but pending the appeal the judge declined Apple Computer's request for an interim payment of £1.5m.

History from Wikepedia and OldCompanyResearch.com.

---

About Specimens

Specimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".

Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.

These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity over the past several years.