Ping Finds Another Way To Make Money

Has everyone upgraded to iTunes 10 yet? Either way- you may have heard about Apple's new music service called "Ping." But wait- isn't that name taken?

PHOENIX, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- PING and its parent company, Karsten Manufacturing Corporation, announced today that they have entered into an agreement with Apple under which Apple will use the PING trademark in connection with Apple's innovative new social music discovery feature in iTunes. Apple introduced the iTunes PING feature today.

Founded in 1959, PING is a famous premium brand that holds more than 1000 trademark registrations around the world, many related to golf equipment. The company also owns trademark rights in PING for social networking and other online services.
This announcement involves two companies that were founded by visionaries who created products that greatly impacted their industries. Karsten Solheim invented the PING® putter in his Redwood City, California garage and went on to revolutionize the golf equipment industry. The groundbreaking first Apple® computer was developed in nearby Palo Alto in 1976.

"We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Apple," said John Solheim, Chairman and CEO of Karsten Manufacturing Corporation and PING. "Like PING, Apple carries a reputation for innovation and quality. I have always had great respect for companies that have changed and improved the ways things are done and I continue to model PING along those lines. Apple is a truly great example of this kind of enterprise."

WOW! I hope you're wearing your rubber boots- because it's getting DEEP! I'm trying to picture the duel Ping/Apple fanboy it would take to write a press release that juicy.

I guess congrats to Ping for finding another way to make some money. I certainly can't blame them for making the move. The more surprising part to me is that Apple couldn't come up with their own name. Apple has so much power they could invent a 4 or 5 letter word and it'd be part of the everyday American vernacular in weeks.

They're not the only ones to do it, though. Have you noticed on the bottom of every Droid commercial the trademark to Lucas Films? Freaking George Lucas makes money every time a phone is purchased with a Google OS?! Unreal!

Full Press Release

photo source

[ comments ]

Nethmonkey says:
have you seen the promo they are doing for limited edition R2-D2 Droid styled phones? At least they are taking advantage of the trademark. Next announcement from Ping, new golfbag with built-in iPhone docking station... wait... that's brilliant... must patent golfbag with iPod dock, brb

9/9/10

Kickntrue says:
@nethmonkey- clearly you're not familiar with US Patent law or you'd never say "brb." More like, See you in 3 years... HAHA.

9/9/10

mjaber says:
Hmmm... PING was able to copyright "ping" in the PC/Net world? I'm kinda surprised by that, since it is a commonly used computer term. Oh well.

The "Droid" is a trademark of Verizon, not Google. There are many google OS phones that aren't Droids.

9/9/10

LongTimeAway says:
Copyright is different from Patent and both are different from Trademark. Now, back to golf. :-)

9/9/10