marketing a product 

marketing a product

You can't market a product that can be mistakened for the product of another. The reason is that psychologically, people associated items that look similar as having the same quality as the original product, and consumers will assume that the two companies have something in common. In other words, the rip-off product is trying to bank on the consumer perception of the original product.

In my Consumer Behavior class we studied the case of a regional soft drink called "Corr's Natural Soda". The can looked vaguely like "Coors", but the script was different (to someone paying attention) and the former can had a big cross-section of a lemon on it.

Coor's Brewing Company sued the regional soda manufacturer claiming that "Corr's" was trying to facilitate their market position and gain benefits through the name and the look of the can. The latter defended by saying that it was named after the owner "Robert Corr".

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The courts sided with Coor's Brewing Company. They told the regional soda company to change the product to make it less similar to Coors. They were told to not put the name in script and if they wanted to name their soda after the person, they had to use the guy's full name and not just the last name with an apostrophe s so as to not deceive. The soda was changed to "Robert Corr Natural Soda," the name was put in a regular (albeit ugly) Serif font, and the can looked different enough from Coors that no one would expect there to be a connection.

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The Coors versus Corr's case gives some insight, so I think Apple has a case. Many people will look at this "Super Shuffle" and think either Apple made it (since it looks almost exactly like the iPod shuffle), or that this company builds it for Apple (and thus the customer is getting the same product for less money because they don't pay Apple's markup). Then they'll go home and find out it doesn't support purchases from the iTunes Music Store, and you'll have some unhappy customers.

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Clearly this ripoff product is gaining value by banking on Apple's look and feel. The fact that they put "Shuffle" in the name (a non-obvious name that only has value now that Apple has an iPod shuffle) and their ad rips Apple's ads off makes it worse.

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I'm sure Apple Legal will have a response Monday morning. Like with the case of Future Power who ripped off the iMacs years ago, Apple needs to quelch the iPod ripoffs early and often. If someone wants to make a competing product, great, but market the product on its own merits, not trying to deceive customers.