That’s right, this week’s Grinds My Gears is about Apple’s recent abuse of the patent system. In case you didn’t wanted to take the time to read the entire article, Apple has decided to start handing out cease and desist letters to any company using the word “POD” in their products. Their reasoning is that consumers may confuse these products with the iPod product line.

Apparently, Apple has decided the word ‘pod’, in which they stuck the letter ‘i’ in front of, cannot be used by anyone else. From my understanding, patent laws prevent a company from owning common language words. What Apple is attempting to do is own a TON of words in the English language. In fact, under their assinine reasoning, the band POD might confuse me with the portable music player.

Screw you Apple, those third party products make up half of the iPod’s success. Since there are so many accessories to the iPod, they boost the continued sales of the device. If the PODSkins boost sales of the iPod by 10%, shut up and enjoy the unauthorized bonus. How could anyone mistake any one of the 500-something accessories and non-related items? For shame Apple, many years you have been casting a sour look at Microsoft for their heavy-handed tactics and here you are trying to defend ownership of an English word.

What’s next, are you going to claim ownership to the letter ‘i’? Am I not allowed to use it in a sentance now? Shall we stop using the term podcasting? That whole technology was birthed in the Era of the Pod. Perhaps the product should have been centered around a popular vowel and a commonly used word relating to peas.

While I am at it, perhaps Google should just shut the hell up as well. For years, they’ve been wanting to become synonymous with “search.” Congratulations, the term “googling it” or “googled it” (google as a verb) has made it to main stream media. It is official, when most people think of search, they think of Google. So what the hell is the problem? They go to all of that trouble to create a brand, promote the hell out of it, strive to be the best, and then when the word becomes common place, they complain that it loses its meaning. That is a very self-defeating marketing strategy.

I’ll never understand how a company can go to such great lengths to control your thought and speech so much so that you think of and speak of ther brand, yet don’t let it disassociate it with the actual product. Screw you both. In fact, here’s a nice search that will surely piss off a few companies.