HTC Vivid Leads to Lawsuit by Adult Entertainment Company
HTC has received a cease-and-desist letter from Adult entertainment company Vivid Entertainment that claims the manufacturer has infringed trademarks with the release and marketing of its HTC Vivid smartphone.
The HTC Vivid was released on Nov. 6, and Vivid Entertainment is demanding that the manufacturer change the name of its new smartphone that is powered by the AT&T network.
Vivid Entertainment claims that the marketing of the smartphone could cause confusion between the brands, according to technology website The Verge. The website suggests that Vivid Entertainment wants to avoid consumers thinking that "Vivid" the company and "Vivid" the phone are somehow connected.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The Verge has confirmed that HTC is aware of the issue and suggests that HTC will mostly likely want to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
"We are reviewing the complaint and don't expect to have any further comment until it is resolved," HTC America told The Verge.
HTC has previously had issues with the naming of one of its phones. Earlier this year, the HTC Chacha had its name changed to the HTC Chachacha in Spain after search engine Chacha.com complained of brand confusion.
The HTC Vivid is one of the first 4G LTE smartphones on the AT&T network. It features a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 4.5-inch super LCD display, 8-megapixel camera with 1080p HD video, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread.
Apple recently experienced a similar issue when it filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Forum to gain control of the domain name iPhone4s.com and six other domain names that relate to the iPhone 4S with X-rated content, fearing that consumers would associate the websites with the company and its products.
